Ever-Widening Horizon

June 11th-12th, 2015

General Commission on Archives & History

Two-Day Workshop on the Methodist Missions’ Photo Albums for Historians and Visual Studies Scholars

In their history of American Methodism, Russell E. Richey, Kenneth E. Rowe and Jean Miller Schmidt define the half century beginning in the mid-1880s as the time that was devoted to “rethinking mission.” As the United States was awaking to its ambition and responsibility as a major world power, its most influential denomination felt the need to answer the call of “an ever-widening horizon.” [1] It also implied new strategies, methods and policies, including the adoption of new visual forms of communication – a trend which culminated in the 1919 Columbus exhibition celebrating the centenary of Methodist missions. [2]

This two-day workshop sponsored by The United Methodist Church’s General Commission on Archives and History, by the Labex TransferS (ENS, CNRS, Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris), Drew Theological Seminary and Drew University Library, is an invitation to explore and to understand Methodism’s expanding visual culture, and the ever-widening horizon of photographic practices at the turn of the 20th-century.

Organizers

• Christopher J. Anderson (Head of Special Collections, University Archives, and Methodist Librarian)
• Didier Aubert (Associate Professor in American Studies, Sorbonne Nouvelle University – TransferS)
• Dale Paterson (Archivist, General Commission on Archives and History of The United Methodist Church)
• Morris Davis (Associate Dean for Academic Affairs)