The Armstrong Lectures at Kalamazoo College are made possible by the Homer J. Armstrong Endowment in Religion. Established in 1969 in honor of Dr. Homer J. Armstrong, eminent pastor and long-time trustee of Kalamazoo College. The fund was provided through the generosity of numerous friends of the College.
The Spring 2023 Armstrong Lecture
Tuesday, May 2
7:00pm EST
Olmsted Room, Mandelle Hall
This year’s guest speaker is Dr. Edward Curtis.
Edward Curtis is the William M. and Gail M. Plater Chair of the Liberal Arts and Professor of Religious Studies at the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts at Indiana University, Indianapolis. He is the author or editor of 14 books about Black, Muslim, and Arab American Studies, and the recipient of Mellon, Fulbright, NEH, and Carnegie fellowships and grants. Curtis grew up in Southern Illinois, where his Arab great-grandfather settled in 1899.
Please join the Department of Religion for Dr. Curtis’ talk,
“Muslims of the Heartland: How Ottoman Syrian Immigrants Made a Home in the American Midwest”
Most Michiganders are familiar with the large Arab Muslim population around Detroit, but what they don’t know is that some of the people who established these communities after World War I were first homesteaders in the Dakotas, railroad car workers in Indiana, and school children in Iowa. Edward Curtis, a descendant of those Syrian-Lebanese settlers, reveals the untold story of the racism and environmental challenges they faced, the mosques they built, and the Midwestern towns that they came to call home.

The lecture is free and open the public
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Past Guest Lecturers
2021, October 27: Dr. Andrea Jain
2021, February 23: Dr. Amanullah De Sondy
2019, May 7: Dr. Robert Orsi
2018, March 5: Dr. Judith Weisenfeld
2017, February 15: Dr. Tisa Wenger
2016, May 4: Dr. Sufia Uddin
2015, May 13: Dr. Kathryn Lofton
2014, May 15: Dr. Pamela Klassen
2013, April 10: Dr. Karen King
2012, May 14: Dr. Ann Taves
2010, October 21: Dr. David Hackett
2010, February 15: Dr. Wendy Dongier
2008, May 01: Dr. Emilie M. Townes
2006, October 12: Dr. Vasudha Narayanan
2005, November 3: Dr. Bernard McGinn