Media Coverage
History Professor Receives NEH Fellowship for Research in Turkey (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Darinda Sharp
Publication: Arkansas Newswire
Date: 5/2/2013
Abstract: press release announcing NEH FPIRI ARIT fellowship award to Dr. Nikolay Antov, History, University of Arkansas
URL: https://newswire.uark.edu/articles/21116/history-professor-receives-neh-fellowship-for-research-in-turkey
Interview: Hale Yilmaz on social transformation in republican Turkey (Media Coverage)
Author(s): William Armstrong
Publication: Hurriyet Daily News
Date: 1/28/2017
Abstract: Interview took place on the occasion of publication in Turkish of Hale Yilmaz' older publication, “Becoming Turkish: Nationalist Reforms and Cultural Negotiations in Early Republican Turkey, 1923-1945,” now informed by her NEH research on the Menemen incident that reflected the struggle to build republican Turkey and now is commemorated as a holiday in December. The new research engages with the experiences and events in small local villages.
URL: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/interview-hale-yilmaz-on-social-transformation-in-republican-turkey.aspx?pageID=238&nID=109040&NewsCatID=338
Review of Nikolay Antov, The Ottoman 'Wild West' (Review)
Author(s): Rijad Dautovic
Publication: Reading Religion
Date: 4/8/2019
Abstract: This work covers the development of the distinctive Muslim community in the Deliorman and Gerlovo region of present day Bulgaria. It balances divergent Turkish and Bulgarian narratives of origin and conversion while also considering the central religious authority vs. its pragmatism. The study gives an illustrative presentation and a comprehensive case study of the development of the early Ottoman Empire while delving into issues of interpretation.
URL: http://readingreligion.org/books/ottoman-wild-west
Review, Nikolay Antov, The Ottoman "Wild West": The Balkan Frontier in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Review)
Author(s): Rhoads Murphey
Publication: Journal of Interdisciplinary History
Date: 6/5/2019
Abstract: Antov's monograph studies in detail the process of population growth through rural migration to, and investment in, the existing urban centers in the northeastern Balkans, such as Shumen, alongside the foundation and rapid expansion of new urban centers such as Hezargrad. Both cities served as supply and distribution hubs along the principal routes of passage between the southern Balkans and the Danube waterway. The study gives priority to imperial expansion, colonization, and (to a lesser extent), conversion to Islam.
URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/726035
Review, Nikolay Antov, The Ottoman "Wild West": The Balkan Frontier in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Review)
Author(s): Sophia Laiou
Publication: Journal of Early Modern History
Date: 10/19/2019
Abstract: This book on the Ottoman Balkan frontier in the 15th and 16th centuries examines significant topics of early modern Ottoman and Balkan history. Antov considers the colonization process, religious conversion, state centralization, and accommodationist policies, focusing on two areas of contemporary Bulgaria, Deliorman and Gerlovo. He uses a variety of Ottoman sources — from tax registers to Islamic hagiographic accounts (velayetname) and other narrative sources, fetva collections, administrative documents as well as non-Ottoman accounts — to investigate fully the “indigenization of Islam” in the eastern Balkans as well as the imperial policy to institutionalize the Ottoman state’s authority in the area. The study convincingly challenges established views in Balkan national and Turkish historiography. It also contributes significantly to the discussion of how the Ottoman state became an empire, and the process of the imperialization and its effect on the non-Muslim population.
URL: https://doi.org/10.1163/15700658-12342019-09
Review of Nikolay Antov, The Ottoman "Wild West": The Balkan Frontier in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Media Coverage)
Author(s):
Publication: H-Net Reviews
Date: 4/12/2020
Abstract: In the fifteenth century, Deliorman, Gerlovo, and the adjacent regions of the northeastern Balkans were sparsely populated. Those who did inhabit the region were part of the native Christian population or seminomadic non-sharia-minded Turcoman Muslims who were central to the region’s conquest by the Ottomans. Over the next century, the population grew dramatically from an influx of heterodox non-sharia-minded dervishes and Turcoman seminomads. Antov’s The Ottoman “Wild West” successfully demonstrates how these heterodox seminomadic groups, which epitomized the struggle against the Ottoman state’s centralizing project, were incorporated into the “Ottoman political and administrative-territorial framework”
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=53649
Review, Nikolay Antov, The Ottoman “Wild West”: The Balkan Frontier in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Review)
Author(s):
Publication: International Journal of Middle East Studies
Date: 9/20/2020
Abstract: Amid the hundreds of booksin Western languages on the Ottoman Balkans, few highlight the ottoman contribution to Balkan development. Nikolay Antov studies the foundation of one of the largest Muslim communities in the Balkans - that of Deliorman and Gerlovo in Bulgaria - and its relationship to the Christian communities around it. The book makes the case of Deliorman easily comparable to studies on other localities, and it approaches arguments about Islamization in the Balkans from a radically new angle, setting islamization in the context of colonization and settlement processes, local economic changes and population movements, and events occurring elsewhere in the empire. In the process Antov makes a valuable contribution to undrestanding the transformation of a frontier region into a heartland.
URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-middle-east-studies/article/abs/ottoman-wild-west-the-balkan-frontier-in-the-fifteenth-and-sixteenth-centuries-nikolay-antov-cambridge-uk-cambridge-university-press-2017-pp-333-10500-cloth-isbn-9781107182639/16E094EF9C6C3795482F3601E9763889#
Review of Melis Hafez, Inventing Laziness (Review)
Author(s): Seyman Afacan
Publication: Eurasian Studies
Date: 10/6/2023
Abstract: Looking into discussions on productivity and social condemnation of laziness in the late Ottoman Empire, Inventing laziness identifies an emerging Ottoman culture of productivity. As the first dedicated academic book on the subjects of laziness and productivity in the late Ottoman Empire, Inventing laziness offers a fresh look at the literature on Ottoman bureaucracy, morality and ‘Islamism’ while tying into a larger global discussion on Orientalism, capitalism, nationalism, and the modern state. It is innovative, analytical, and well-researched. Initially a 2012 University of California Ph. D. dissertation supervised by Professor James L. Gelvin, Hafez’s book traces “the development of a binary between work and laziness during the last century of the Ottoman Empire” (p. 2).
URL: https://brill.com/view/journals/eurs/20/2/article-p254_12.xml
Review of Elizabeth Baughan, Etruria and Anatolia (Review)
Publication: Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Date: 4/27/2024
Abstract: This volume proceeding from a symposium entitled, “Material Connections and Artistic Exchange: The Case of Etruria and Anatolia,” held at Rome in 2016 brings together prominent scholars on the archaeology of Mediterranean civilizations. The content of the book mainly includes papers on comparative analysis of Etruscan and Anatolian material culture, besides two chapters confined to present overview of the scholarship with a critical approach. The general framework of the book aims at discussing the dynamics of the artistic exchanges between Etruscans and the Anatolian communities. Although the connection between Etruria and Anatolia is a long-standing archaeological debate, this book brings a new insight to the subject by bringing a critical approach to the established scholarship.
URL: https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2024/2024.02.39/
Associated Products
Morality and Modernity: Discussions around Work Ethics in the Long Ottoman Nineteenth Century (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Morality and Modernity: Discussions around Work Ethics in the Long Ottoman Nineteenth Century
Author: Melis Hafez
Abstract: In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, issues regarding morality became “a burning issue of the day” for the Ottoman society. Morality gained a new political charge, where the moral and political realms overlapped with a new set of practices and norms. Revitalization of a classical genre, morality books, takes place in this context. More than a hundred books published on morality attests to the fact that morality became one of expanding/transforming fields of knowledge.
As the Empire went through a nation-and-state formation process, Ottoman moralists placed an original emphasis on work, making it a central issue not only for the moral development of the individual but also for the advancement of the nation in general, articulating normative dimensions of citizenship. They fortified their argumentations by referencing Islam’s symbolic universe. They adamantly opposed beliefs and practices that are identified as handicaps for productivity by declaring them un-Islamic and anti-progress. Could this phenomenon of moralized and popularized discourses of productivity be seen as merely a Western content filling the Islamic forms? More specifically, how would examining morality books as cultural factors enable us to understand the connection between Islamic discourses and establishing modern and
moralizing narratives, especially about work ethics of citizenry? The assumption that takes Islam and modernity as static notions does not explain the wealth of Ottoman experience. This presentation attempts to explore the question of morality, religion, and modernity by engaging with a very specific historic period and its sources.
Date: 10/16/2015
Primary URL:
http://www.osmanliarastirmalari.org/docs/Ozet_Kitabi.pdfPrimary URL Description: Conference abstract book, p. 128
Secondary URL:
http://www.osmanliarastirmalari.org/docs/PROGRAM-ENG.pdfSecondary URL Description: Conference program. Session on "Ottoman Morality."
Conference Name: International Congress on Ottoman Studies, Sakarya University
Mudbrick to Mosaics: Results and Challenges of Archaeological Fieldwork at Hacimusalar Höyük in Northern Lycia (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: Mudbrick to Mosaics: Results and Challenges of Archaeological Fieldwork at Hacimusalar Höyük in Northern Lycia
Abstract: Baughan reports on the excavation of the site of Hacimusalar Höyük, located in a plateau above Antalya. The project is a multi-period mound site that accumulated from the remains of human settlement spanning thousands of years. Thirteen meters high, the mound was occupied from at least the early Bronze Age, circa 3000 B.C., through the late Byzantine period, circa 1200 A.D.
The excavations have focused on the Byzantine levels on the top and center of the mound, with several buildings—including a church complete with mosaics and inscriptions. On the slopes that have eroded over the years, the team has excavated early Bronze Age levels. There they have uncovered a number of houses, some of which were burned, preserving the architecture. Because the architecture is unbaked mud, when it burns it becomes fired into a hard substance like brick, preserving the impressions of the wood, reed, and plant materials used inside the structure of the wall. The architectural evidence allows researchers to understand how the buildings were constructed, what they were like, and what they were used for. The burnt buildings also conserve intact or broken pottery and other finds that can be put back together and studied. On the house floors, the excavation team has found things that were in the room at the time of the fire—things that have to do with weaving, cooking, stone tools or objects.
Author: Elizabeth Baughan
Date: 01/20/2016
Location: Turkish Embassy, Washington DC
Primary URL: http://www.americanfriendsofturkey.org/calendar/
Primary URL Description: Event as presented by the American Friends of Turkey, one of the sponsors of the lecture series together with the American Turkish Council and the Institute of Turkish Studies.
The Abdals of Rum(eli): Heterodox Islam, Turcoman Colonization, and Legitimacy in the Eastern Ottoman Balkans (15th-16th centuries) (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: The Abdals of Rum(eli): Heterodox Islam, Turcoman Colonization, and Legitimacy in the Eastern Ottoman Balkans (15th-16th centuries)
Abstract: The focus of this presentation was the Abdals of Rum - a prominent heterodox group in the early centuries of Ottoman history, more specifically the Abdals of Rum in the eastern Balkans in the 15th and 16th centuries. The Abdal's ideology and claims to legitimacy was based in part on a comparative reading of the velayetnames (vitas) of two of the leading Abdal saintly figures in the Balkans in the period. The talk traced their activities such as participation in conquest and colonization, their relations with semi-nomadic groups (e.g. the yürüks), and their place in the bigger picture of Ottoman history. Eventually, the Abdals experienced gradual marginalization in context of the rise of the centralizing Ottoman state. The talk focused on the activities of the Abdals in the region of Deliorman (NE Balkans) based on the presenter's own region-specific research.
Author: Nikolay Antov
Date: 05/12/2014
Location: ARIT Istanbul Center
Couched in Death: Klinai in Ancient Anatolia (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: Couched in Death: Klinai in Ancient Anatolia
Abstract: Ancient klinai were specialized luxury furnishings designed for reclining at elite banquets and symposia. A widespread Mediterranean tradition of burying the dead on stone replicas of such klinai seems to have originated in the sixth century BCE in western Anatolia, among the dynastic cultures of Lydia and Phrygia and their neighbors. Well preserved examples of the klinai have been discovered and excavated in proximity to the Hacimusalar site. This lecture explores how this tradition developed, why it flourished during the era of Achaemenid Persian rule (ca. 550 – 330 BCE), and what social and cultural meanings it may have carried for the people who chose to bury their loved ones in this way.
Author: Elizabeth Baughan
Date: 06/10/2015
Location: U.S. Ambassador's Residence, Ankara
The Bay of Iskenderun Survey: Approaches to Documenting Southeastern Cilicia's Archaeological Landscape (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: The Bay of Iskenderun Survey: Approaches to Documenting Southeastern Cilicia's Archaeological Landscape
Author: Ann Killebrew
Abstract: Encompassing the Issos, Iskenderun, and Arsuz plains of southeastern Cilicia, the Bay of Iskenderun Archaeology Project documented nearly 200 archaeological sites during six seasons of survey (2004-2009). It represents the first large-scale, multi-season, and systematic archaeological investigation of this region. The survey's goals included the compilation of an inventory of archaeological remains in an area experience rapid urban and commercial development, together with the examination of the region as an interface of cultural exchange between the Mediterranean, Anatolia, and the Levant. A wide variety of extensive and intensive survey techniques were employed to identify and map observable archaeological features. A discussion and evaluation of these combined approaches, their effectiveness, and implications for heritage management are discussed in this paper.
Date: 09/13/2014
Primary URL:
http://www.eaa2014istanbul.org/Primary URL Description: Links to the 2014 meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists, program and abstract. Session organized by ARIT Ankara director, Dr. Elif Denel, "From Turkey to North America: Scholarly Discourse on the Archaeological Heritage of Turkey
Conference Name: 2014 Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists, Session "From Turkey to North America: Scholarly Discourse on the Archaeological Heritage of Turkey
Laziness as a Social Disease in Late Ottoman Society (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: Laziness as a Social Disease in Late Ottoman Society
Abstract: Dr. Hafez examines the emergence of a culture of productivity in late Ottoman society, a dynamically constructed series of practices and discourses that moralize/idealize/economize work and stigmatize laziness as a social disease. She explores the moralization of work and the marginalization of laziness throughout the reform period; how a new anxiety about productivity generated a series of state reforms to eradicate laziness in Ottoman imperial bureaus and in society at large; and the ways in which public debates on productivity, leisure, and laziness shifted in various historical moments in late imperial society.
Author: Melis Hafez
Date: 07/25/2016
Location: ARIT Istanbul
Primary URL:
https://www.facebook.com/Friends-of-the-American-Research-Institute-Turkey-FARIT-149955911712053/?fref=ts#Primary URL Description: Facebook post, 7/13/2016
Funerary Beds and Banquet Couches in Etruria and Anatolia (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Funerary Beds and Banquet Couches in Etruria and Anatolia
Author: Elizabeth Baughan
Abstract: Dr. Baughan engages in comparative discussion focused on the burial furniture, banqueting ideologies, and cultural identities in western Anatolia and Etruria.
Date: 05/23/2016
Primary URL:
http://mdelchiarocenter.org/Documents/ProgramFINAL_2016may23.pdfPrimary URL Description: Conference program
Conference Name: Connections and Artistic Exchange: The Case of Etruria and Anatolia
Crusading in the Fifteenth Century and its Relation to the Development of Ottoman Dynastic Legitimacy, Self-image, and the Ottoman Consolidation of Authority (Book Section)Title: Crusading in the Fifteenth Century and its Relation to the Development of Ottoman Dynastic Legitimacy, Self-image, and the Ottoman Consolidation of Authority
Author: Nikolay Antov
Editor: Norman Housely
Abstract: Dr. Antov looks at what was arguably the most complex region of all for inter-faith relations, the Balkans, exploring the influence of crusading ideas in the eastern Adriatic, Bosnia and Romania. He shows that the conquest of “New Rome” (Constantinople) played a role in making the Ottomans reflect on their past and ponder their destiny. He explores the complexity of interactions between the Christian and Islamic powers which stretched from the central Mediterranean to the Middle East, and the impact that they exerted on Ottoman legitimating processes.
Year: 2017
Primary URL:
https://www.routledge.com/The-Crusade-in-the-Fifteenth-Century-Converging-and-competing-cultures/Housley/p/book/9781472464712Primary URL Description: Publisher's book page
Access Model: hardback book
Publisher: Routledge
Book Title: The Crusade in the Fifteenth Century: Converging and Competing Cultures
ISBN: 97814724647
Emergence and Historical Development of Muslim Communities in the Ottoman Balkans: Historical and Historiographical Remarks (Book Section)Title: Emergence and Historical Development of Muslim Communities in the Ottoman Balkans: Historical and Historiographical Remarks
Author: Nikolay Antov
Editor: Yana Hashamova
Editor: Theodora Dragostinova
Abstract: Dr. Antov analyzes the major patterns of formation of Muslim communities in the Ottoman
Balkans from the time of the Ottoman conquest in the second half of the fourteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries. He discusses the main factors of the ethno-national and religious transformation such as the influx of Muslim settlers from outside of the Balkans, conversion of indigenous Balkan populations to Islam, and population movements within the Balkans. By exploring the evolution of historiographical interpretations of these religious and demographic transformations, he also illuminates the political nature of the question of Ottoman legacy in the area. National historiographies, be it in Bulgaria, Bosnia, Greece, or Albania, often presented divergent interpretations of the Ottoman past, which reflected their current national priorities. Antov brings all of these interpretations together to highlight the complex historical reality and the tenuous contemporary consensus in matters of demographic diversity.
Year: 2016
Primary URL:
http://ceupress.com/books/html/Beyond_Mosque_church_State.htmPrimary URL Description: Publishers page
Access Model: hardback book
Publisher: Central European University Press
Book Title: Beyond Mosque, Church, and State: Alternative Narratives of the Nation in the Balkans
ISBN: 9789633861332
Hacimusalar Höyük/Choma: A Regional Center in Northern Lycia, from the Early Bronze Age to the Byzantine Era (Book Section)Title: Hacimusalar Höyük/Choma: A Regional Center in Northern Lycia, from the Early Bronze Age to the Byzantine Era
Author: Ilknur Özgen
Author: Elizabeth Baughan
Editor: Hakan Dündar
Editor: Havva Iskan
Abstract: This chapter provides an overview of the sites, excavation, and research in Lycia undertaken by the team at Hacimusalar, Elmali - Antalya, Turkey, the heart of Lycian territory. The site is provides new evidence for urbanization in the Early Bronze Age (3rd millennium) and an unparalleled occupational sequence from the Bronze to Iron Age in the region.
Year: 2016
Primary URL:
http://kitap.ykykultur.com.tr/kitaplar/lukkadan-likyaya-sarpedon-ve-aziz-nikolaosun-ulkesi-from-lukka-to-lycia-the-land-of-sarpedon-and-st-nicholasPrimary URL Description: publisher presentation
Secondary URL:
http://images.ykykultur.com.tr/upload/document/5ab7d41f-c906-498f-ba1b-214b525cc01b.pdfSecondary URL Description: front matter access
Access Model: hardback book
Publisher: Tüpras - Yapi Kredi Culture, Arts and Publishing
Book Title: From Lukka to Lycia: The Land of Sarpedon and St. Nicholas
ISBN: 9789750837104
Burial klinai and ‘Totenmahl’? (Book Section)Title: Burial klinai and ‘Totenmahl’?
Author: Elizabeth Baughan
Editor: C. M. Draycott
Editor: M. Stamataopoulou
Abstract: How can burial furnishings help us to approach the meanings of banqueting imagery in funerary art or understand the place of banqueting in funerary ideologies? Should tombs furnished with klinai or replicas of banquet couches be understood as physical, three-dimensional representations of banqueting, meant to equip the dead for an eternal ‘Totenmahl’? Or do funeral couches mark their occupants as members of the elite class that enjoyed banqueting and/or luxury furniture while alive? These questions are not so easily answered, because klinai in the ancient Greek world were multi-functional furnishings, used for sleeping and resting as well as for dining and revelry, and because burial assemblages are constructed representations, much like tomb paintings or reliefs . This paper will summarize evidence for burial klinai in Greece and Anatolia in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, with particular focus on tombs with additional signifiers of banqueting (tables, drinking vessels, musical instruments, etc.) or with related banqueting imagery (such as the Karaburun tumulus in northern Lycia). Parameters for interpreting funerary klinai as indicators of a ‘Totenmahl’ concept will be proposed, and relevant ethnographic evidence will also be considered. It will be argued that, far from providing ‘hard evidence’ to guide our interpretations of contemporary funerary images, burial assemblages reflect the same processes of ideological construction that lie behind two-dimensional representations and thus are subject to the same questions of interpretation. Nevertheless, consideration of burial furniture enriches the study of the ‘funerary banquet’ and, when seen alongside contemporary images, underlines the importance of this concept—however defined—in certain eras and regions.
Year: 2016
Primary URL:
http://www.peeters-leuven.be/boekoverz.asp?nr=10016Primary URL Description: publisher's presentation
Access Model: book
Publisher: Peeters
Book Title: Dining and Death: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the 'Funerary Banquet' in Ancient Art, Burial and Belief
ISBN: 978-90-429-325
Moralists as Culture Producers in Late Ottoman Society (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Moralists as Culture Producers in Late Ottoman Society
Author: Melis Hafez
Abstract: Many Ottoman intellectuals, in their conceptualization of civilization, aimed to reconcile the material achievements of European civilization with Ottoman-Islamic morality and aesthetics. Even so, historiographies in the post-Ottoman sovereign states have often equated modernization with de-Ottomanization, a notion which excludes the Ottoman period as a legitimate setting for the study of modernity. This paper explores moralizing writing and culture as a component of the trope toward modernity.
Date: 03/25/2017
Primary URL:
https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/mes/events/conferences/late-ottoman-civilization/index.phpPrimary URL Description: Schedule of the conference sponsored by the University of Texas at Austin, Middle Eastern Studies
Conference Name: Rethinking Late Ottoman Civilization Symposium, session entitled Perspectives on Ottoman Civilization
Changes in Gender Relations in Urban Turkey, 1930s-1950s (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Changes in Gender Relations in Urban Turkey, 1930s-1950s
Author: Hale Yilmaz
Abstract: Yilmaz discusses the changing laws and social reforms aimed at modernizing the Turkish populace and how they affected people in the city and the countryside. In this paper she focuses on women, children, the elderly, and other muted social groups.
Date: 11-22-2015
Primary URL:
https://cmes.fas.harvard.edu/files/cmes/files/mesa_program_harvard-affiliates_15.pdfPrimary URL Description: Program of the 2015 annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Assocation
Conference Name: Session: Gender, Sex and Prostitution in Turkey, 1920s-1950s
The Ottoman ‘Wild West’ The Balkan Frontier in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Book)Title: The Ottoman ‘Wild West’ The Balkan Frontier in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
Author: Nikolay Antov
Abstract: In the late fifteenth century, the north-eastern Balkans were under-populated and under-institutionalized. Yet, by the end of the following century, the regions of Deliorman and Gerlovo were home to one of the largest Muslim populations in southeast Europe. Nikolay Antov sheds fresh light on the mechanics of Islamization along the Ottoman frontier, and presents an instructive case study of the 'indigenization' of Islam – the process through which Islam, in its diverse doctrinal and socio-cultural manifestations, became part of a distinct regional landscape. Simultaneously, Antov uses a wide array of administrative, narrative-literary, and legal sources, exploring the perspectives of both the imperial center and regional actors in urban, rural, and nomadic settings, to trace the transformation of the Ottoman polity from a frontier principality into a centralized empire. Contributing to the further understanding of Balkan Islam, state formation and empire building, this unique text will appeal to those studying Ottoman, Balkan, and Islamic world history.
Year: 2017
Primary URL:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316863084Primary URL Description: Publisher's presentation
Access Model: print
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9781316863084
Copy sent to NEH?: No
Criminalization of Laziness: Punishment, Reward, and Negotiation in the Ottoman Bureaus (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Criminalization of Laziness: Punishment, Reward, and Negotiation in the Ottoman Bureaus
Author: Melis Hafez
Abstract: During the nineteenth century, the Ottoman state took punitive steps against bureaucrats who failed to meet the new standards of efficiency. Bureaucrats who neglected their duties were fined, demoted, transferred, suspended, and even dismissed. This paper explores the changing perceptions of productivity and efficiency in the Ottoman bureaucracy. By focusing on the bureaucratic offices of the period, I aim to shed light on the role of social practice in this emergent culture of productivity.
Date: 11/19/2017
Primary URL:
https://mesana.org/mymesa/meeting_program_abs.php?pid=551a0f9b969e10c85f85ae01039641b2Primary URL Description: Conference paper abstract
Conference Name: Annual Meeting, Middle East Studies Association
Ottoman Moral Entrepreneurs, Cultural Politics and Moral Citizenship in Late Ottoman Society (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Ottoman Moral Entrepreneurs, Cultural Politics and Moral Citizenship in Late Ottoman Society
Author: Melis Hafez
Abstract: This paper investigates the historical development of writing on morality as form of social intervention in the late Ottoman society (1870s-1920). Ottoman moralists, composed of lowbrow public intellectuals (mid-rank bureaucrats, school instructors, doctors, and military men) took upon themselves an entrepreneurial role in guiding their nation to “progress,” both morally and materially. Between the 1870s and 1910s, they published more than a hundred morality books as well as numerous articles and sermons in periodicals, dramatically changing not only the format but also the content of this longstanding genre on many levels. They codified an ethic that is focused on right behavior, right emotions, and civic duties. Thus, Ottoman moralists were involved in shaping the emerging civic culture through their normativized and popularized narratives.
Date: 3/30/2019
Primary URL:
https://www.salisbury.edu/news/article/2019-3-1-SU-Hosts-Inaugural-Mid-Atlantic-Ottoman-Studies-WorkshopPrimary URL Description: conference program
Conference Name: Mid-Atlantic Ottoman Studies Workshop
Between Turk and Muslim: Children and the Qur’an Courses after the 1928 Alphabet Law (Article)Title: Between Turk and Muslim: Children and the Qur’an Courses after the 1928 Alphabet Law
Author: Hale Yilmaz
Abstract: This paper examines how the religious education of Turkish children in the “old letters” became an area of everyday contestation between the state and families and communities in the late 1920s and 1930s. Since children were seen as the nation’s future, state authorities were adamant about teaching the new generation the new alphabet and were equally interested in preventing them from learning the old alphabet. While schools began using the new Turkish alphabet in the 1928–1929 academic year, the informal neighbourhood Qur’an courses held in mosques and private homes became a fiercely contested site between a state determined to socialise children into secular nationhood (partly) by preventing them from learning the Arabic letters, and families and imams who were committed to giving children religious education (necessitating the study of the Arabic alphabet so the Qur’an could be read in its original Arabic). Combining primary sources from previously untapped Ministry of the Interior documents concerning the monitoring in Anatolian towns of these informal courses with insights from the subaltern school on everyday forms of resistance, this article sheds light on a dimension of the 1928 alphabet reform that ties together questions of alphabet change, national and religious identities, education, and childhood.
Year: 2019
Primary URL:
https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2019.1672764Primary URL Description: Access to abstract via Taylor and Francis Online
Access Model: on-line, pay wall
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education
Publisher: Routledge
‘Lydian’ Tomb Traditions Outside of Lydia (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: ‘Lydian’ Tomb Traditions Outside of Lydia
Author: Elizabeth Baughan
Abstract: Professor Baughan reviewed the tombs and burials that have been explored in the region of Lycia, in the vicinity of the Hacimusalar mound. Architecture and decoration in the Lydian and Persian traditions tie to aspects of the burial traditions known from the Lydian capital Sardis.
Date: 12/13/2019
Primary URL:
https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/7009Primary URL Description: Conference publicity and program, Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University
Conference Name: The Lydians and their Neighbors, Ethnolinguistic Identities and Cultural Contact in Anatolia around 700-330 BC
Inventing Laziness: The Culture of Productivity in Late Ottoman Society (Book)Title: Inventing Laziness: The Culture of Productivity in Late Ottoman Society
Author: Melis Hafez
Abstract: Neither laziness nor its condemnation are new inventions, however, perceiving laziness as a social condition that afflicts a 'nation' is. In the early modern era, Ottoman political treatises did not regard the people as the source of the state's problems. Yet in the nineteenth century, as the imperial ideology of Ottomanism and modern discourses of citizenship spread, so did the understanding of laziness as a social disease that the 'Ottoman nation' needed to eradicate. Asking what we can learn about Ottoman history over the long nineteenth-century by looking closely into the contested and shifting boundaries of the laziness - productivity binary, Melis Hafez explores how 'laziness' can be used to understand emerging civic culture and its exclusionary practices in the Ottoman Empire. A polyphonic involvement of moralists, intellectuals, polemicists, novelists, bureaucrats, and, to an extent, the public reveals the complexities and ambiguities of this multifaceted cultural transformation. Using a wide variety of sources, this book explores the sustained anxiety about productivity that generated numerous reforms as well as new understandings of morality, subjectivity, citizenship, and nationhood among the Ottomans.
Year: 2021
Primary URL:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/inventing-laziness/79B72838D2CBC4D4AB1453798BD08F83#fndtn-informationPrimary URL Description: Publisher's presentation
Access Model: book
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9781108427845
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes
Hacımusalar Höyük in the Early Bronze Age (Article)Title: Hacımusalar Höyük in the Early Bronze Age
Author: Ilknur Ozgen
Author: Elizabeth Baughan
Author: Elif Unlu
Abstract: Excavations at Hacımusalar Höyük in southwestern Turkey have uncovered thousands of years of occupation history, from the Early Bronze Age through the Late Byzantine era. This article offers a general survey of the Bronze Age occupation levels so far explored on the northern and western slopes of the mound, with particular focus on two well-preserved Early Bronze II destruction levels, closely superimposed. We present selected finds and architectural features from each stratigraphic level in sequence and discuss their significance for current theories of cultural interaction and social organization in West Anatolia in the Early Bronze Age. This new evidence indicates that Hacımusalar Höyük and the Elmalı plain were more connected with other parts of Anatolia than recent studies of Early Bronze Age cultural zones suggest but still maintained a distinctive regional character.
Year: 2021
Primary URL:
https://www.ajaonline.org/sites/default/files/aja.125.4.ozgen_.pdfPrimary URL Description: .pdf article online
Access Model: open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: American Journal of Archaeology
Publisher: Archaeological Institute of America
Menemen, 1930: National History and Local Memory (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Menemen, 1930: National History and Local Memory
Author: Hale Yilmaz
Abstract: A contribution to the theme of the conference session, Our Challenging Times: The Possibilities and Limits of Oral History in Turkey, from the point of view of the ongoing identity conflicts in the early Turkish Republic.
Date: 10/13/2018
Primary URL:
https://www.oralhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Final-Finished-2018-Conference-Program.pdfPrimary URL Description: Program of the 2018 annual meeting of the Oral History Association
Conference Name: Oral History in Our Challenging Times
Menemen, 1930: Event, History, Memory (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Menemen, 1930: Event, History, Memory
Author: Hale Yilmaz
Abstract: A contribution to the session, Memory and National(ist) Pasts in Turkey: Reflections Through Oral History, based on the events and present-day memory of a contested period in Republican Turkey. Yilmaz re-evaluates the Menemen incident drawing on the previously inaccessible official records and taking into account recent scholarship that has emphasized millennarian or economic aspects of the event.
Date: 7/6/2021
Primary URL:
https://www.brismes.ac.uk/files/documents/BRISMES%20Conference%202021%20Programme%20Smaller%20Size.pdfPrimary URL Description: conference program
Conference Name: Knowledge, Power, and Middle Eastern Studies
Forms and Functions of Beds and Couches in Etruscan and Anatolian Tombs (Book Section)Title: Forms and Functions of Beds and Couches in Etruscan and Anatolian Tombs
Author: Elizabeth Baughan
Editor: Elizabeth Baughan
Editor: Lisa Pieraccini
Abstract: At first glance, the burial beds and couches in many Etruscan tombs look very similar to those found in Lydia, Phrygia, and other parts of Anatolia. Closer inspection reveals striking correspondence of formal details like carved headrests while at the same time highlighting essential differences of arrangement and usage. Iconographic evidence for beds and couches in Etruscan funerary art (tomb paintings and relief cippi) also shows a distinctive Etruscan approach to covering these furnishings with textiles. While the formal similarities do indicate that Etruscan and Anatolian elites knew and used shared furniture styles, they cannot be used to support theories of migration or cultural influence from Anatolia to Etruria since most of the Etruscan examples are earlier than the Anatolian parallels. Key differences in usage further remind us that even with a shared vocabulary of form, distinct cultural dialects can persist.
Year: 2023
Primary URL:
https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/archaeology/classical-archaeology/etruria-and-anatolia-material-connections-and-artistic-exchange?format=HB&isbn=9781009151023Primary URL Description: Publisher's presentation of new publication
Access Model: book
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Book Title: Etruria and Anatolia: Material Connections and Artistic Exchange
ISBN: 9781009151023
Book talk on "Inventing Laziness" (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: Book talk on "Inventing Laziness"
Abstract: As the imperial ideology of Ottomanism and modern discourses of citizenship spread, so did the understanding of laziness as a social disease that the 'Ottoman nation' needed to eradicate. Inventing Laziness asks what we can learn about Ottoman history over the long nineteenth-century by looking closely into the contested and shifting boundaries of the laziness - productivity binary. Hafez explores how 'laziness' can be used to understand emerging civic culture and its exclusionary practices in the Ottoman Empire. A polyphonic involvement of moralists, intellectuals, polemicists, novelists, bureaucrats, and, to an extent, the public reveals the complexities and ambiguities of this multifaceted cultural transformation. Using a wide variety of sources, Hafez's book explores the sustained anxiety about productivity that generated numerous reforms as well as new understandings of morality, subjectivity, citizenship, and nationhood among the Ottomans.
Author: Melis Hafez
Date: 01/31/2023
Location: online and in person, at ARIT Istanbul
Primary URL:
https://aritweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Hafez-Inventing-Laziness.pdfPrimary URL Description: event announcement
Etruria and Anatolia: Material Connections and Artistic Exchange (Book)Title: Etruria and Anatolia: Material Connections and Artistic Exchange
Editor: Elizabeth Baughan
Editor: Lisa Pieraccini
Abstract: Striking similarities in Etruscan and Anatolian material culture reveal various forms of contact and exchange between these regions on opposite sides of the Mediterranean. This is the first comprehensive investigation of these connections, approaching both cultures as agents of artistic exchange rather than as side characters in a Greek-focused narrative. It synthesizes a wide range of material evidence from c. 800 – 300 BCE, from tomb architecture and furniture to painted vases, terracotta reliefs, and magic amulets. By identifying shared practices, common visual language, and movements of objects and artisans (from both east to west and west to east), it illuminates many varied threads of the interconnected ancient Mediterranean fabric. Rather than trying to account for the similarities with any one, overarching theory, this volume presents multiple, simultaneous modes and implications of connectivity while also recognizing the distinct local identities expressed through shared artistic and cultural traditions.
Year: 2023
Primary URL:
https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/archaeology/classical-archaeology/etruria-and-anatolia-material-connections-and-artistic-exchange?site_view=desktopPrimary URL Description: Publisher's presentation of the book
Access Model: Publication
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Type: Edited Volume
ISBN: 9781009151023
Forms and Functions of Beds and Couches in Etruscan and Anatolian Tombs (Book Section)Title: Forms and Functions of Beds and Couches in Etruscan and Anatolian Tombs
Author: Elizabeth Baughan
Editor: Elizabeth Baughan
Editor: Lisa Pieraccini
Abstract: At first glance, the burial beds and couches in many Etruscan tombs look very similar to those found in Lydia, Phrygia, and other parts of Anatolia. Closer inspection reveals striking correspondence of formal details like carved headrests while at the same time highlighting essential differences of arrangement and usage. Iconographic evidence for beds and couches in Etruscan funerary art (tomb paintings and relief cippi) also shows a distinctive Etruscan approach to covering these furnishings with textiles. While the formal similarities do indicate that Etruscan and Anatolian elites knew and used shared furniture styles, they cannot be used to support theories of migration or cultural influence from Anatolia to Etruria since most of the Etruscan examples are earlier than the Anatolian parallels. Key differences in usage further remind us that even with a shared vocabulary of form, distinct cultural dialects can persist.
Year: 2023
Primary URL:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/etruria-and-anatolia/forms-and-functions-of-beds-and-couches-in-etruscan-and-anatolian-tombs/FB5689EF1077C677F6749B2D1C48BA1D#Primary URL Description: Publisher's access to book section
Secondary URL:
https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/archaeology/classical-archaeology/etruria-and-anatolia-material-connections-and-artistic-exchange?site_view=desktopSecondary URL Description: Publisher's presentation of book
Access Model: Publication
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Book Title: Etruria and Anatolia: Material Connections and Artistic Exchange
ISBN: 9781009151023
Menemen, 1930: Event, History, Memory (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Menemen, 1930: Event, History, Memory
Author: Hale Yilmaz
Abstract: This book project concerns the 1930 Menemen incident, a highly contested violent moment in modern Turkish history and historiography. I re-evaluate the Menemen incident drawing on the previously inaccessible official records and taking into account recent scholarship that has emphasized millennarian or economic aspects of the event. I view Menemen, its narratives, its official histories, its media portrayals and remembrances, as a metaphor for exploring the complex relationship between the modern state, secular national culture, popular Islam, and religious reaction.
Date: 07/09/2021
Primary URL:
https://www.brismes.ac.uk/files/documents/BRISMES%20Conference%202021%20Programme%20Smaller%20Size.pdfPrimary URL Description: Conference program
Conference Name: British Society for Middle East Studies, 2021 Conference