Associated Products
From Graveyards to the ‘People’s Gardens’: the Making of Public Leisure Space in Istanbul (Book Section)Title: From Graveyards to the ‘People’s Gardens’: the Making of Public Leisure Space in Istanbul
Author: Berin Gölönü
Editor: Güldem Baykal Büyüksaraç
Editor: Derya Özkan
Abstract: This article focuses on the history of recreational sites in the Taksim area of Istanbul, from their use in the late nineteenth century through their transformation over time. It argues for the importance of preserving historic recreation sites that carry significance for urban residents as spaces where individual and collective social histories have played out. The site that is now termed Taksim Square and Gezi Park has, and continues to be, a charged site of protest where power struggles have taken place between individuals, communities and municipal powers. Most recently, in 2013, this struggle revolved around preserving the square and the park as a public space. While it is important to preserve the park and square, it is also important to lend voice to the various histories that lie buried within this site. Turkey’s dominant political leadership not only employs a neo-Ottoman aesthetic in the neo-liberal development plan for Turkey’s major cities, but it is also resurrecting symbols that represent the late-Ottoman project of modernity. This study articulates a counter-narrative to a selective preservation of late-Ottoman history to ask if and how the people’s gardens truly served the “public benefit” in the past, which publics they served, and how various communities exerted effort to acquire access to and visibility within these spaces.
Year: 2020
Primary URL:
https://www.routledge.com/Commoning-the-City-Empirical-Perspectives-on-Urban-Ecology-Economics/Ozkan-Buyuksarac/p/book/9780367076566Primary URL Description: Publisher Routledge's presentation of the book
Access Model: print and ebook
Publisher: Routledge
Book Title: Commoning the City: Empirical Perspectives on Urban Ecology, Economics, and Ethics
ISBN: 9780367076566
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 explores the development of deontological morality as a form of social intervention in late Ottoman society (1870s-1920). Undergoing socioeconomic and political upheavals in this period, the Ottoman public sphere was saturated with moral reform demands. This project focuses on a cohort of moralists, who took an entrepreneurial role in indigenizing a duty-centered civic morality, while criticizing state and society. Having diverse ethno-confessional (Muslim, Christian, Jewish) and ideological origins, they played a significant role in articulating clashing politico-moral visions. The language they constructed contributed significantly to the politicization of morality and moralization of citizenship in Ottoman and post-Ottoman societies.
Date: 3/30/2019
Primary URL:
https://www.academia.edu/38347207/Mid-Atlantic_Ottoman_Studies_Workshop_Program_2019Primary URL Description: Mid-Atlantic Ottoman Studies Workshop 2019, announcement and program
Conference Name: Mid-Atlantic Ottoman Studies Workshop 2019
Nativist Modernism and Cultural Difference in Turkish Republican Imagery (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: Nativist Modernism and Cultural Difference in Turkish Republican Imagery
Abstract: Professor Gölönü looks at the relationship between cultural heritage practices and artistic output in the transition from the late Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic. She focuses on photographic albums, paintings, and commentaries commissioned by the 19th C. Ottoman ruler Abdulhamid II, to document early Ottoman settlements, history, and culture. She explores connections between late Ottoman artistic development and the canonization of art history. She discusses how folkloric practices, motifs, and narratives then combined with modernist aesthetics in the works of the artists of the 1930s and 1940s in Turkey and the interplay of a "nativized" cultural identity with a nationalist art history.
Author: Berin Gölönü
Date: 1/6/2020
Location: ARIT Istanbul
Primary URL:
https://www.facebook.com/149955911712053/photos/a.617680451606261/3528349137206030/?type=3Primary URL Description: Lecture publicized on Facebook page of the Friends of ARIT, Istanbul
Souvenirs of Leisure and Entertainment in the Late Ottoman Empire (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: Souvenirs of Leisure and Entertainment in the Late Ottoman Empire
Abstract: Dr. Golonu discussed the production of leisure space by looking at selections of Ottoman and Turkish Republican postcard imagery held in the Duke Libraries. Golonu is currently working on a book project on Ottoman sites of leisure referred to as public gardens or "people's gardens," which were modeled after European-style urban parks. Golonu will look at how these gardens replaced older sites of leisure in Thessaloniki and Istanbul, and contextualize their imagery with Ottoman novels, newspaper columns, or memoirs of the day. As public, semi-public and social spaces, such gardens can be viewed as a symptom and cause of the modernizing changes remaking Ottoman society during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Author: Berin Golonu
Date: 9/18/2020
Location: Duke University Islamic Studies Center, Libraries, on Zoom
Primary URL:
https://middleeaststudies.duke.edu/souvenirs-leisure-and-entertainment-late-ottoman-empirePrimary URL Description: Notice of Zoom lecture
Secondary URL:
http://calendar.duke.edu/show?fq=id%3ACAL-2c918084-73dbbf10-0173-fcc54dd6-000064fbdemobedework%40mysite.eduSecondary URL Description: calendar notice
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 panel explored key figures and works that prompt new ways of understanding the status of the Ottoman state and society within the discussion of globalism and its renderings in the last two centuries of the empire. Melis Hafez scrutinized how the increasing numbers of writings on morality served as a form of modern social intervention in late Ottoman society.
Date: 4/23/2021
Primary URL:
https://as.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-as/nearEast/images/April%2023%20Event%20Flier.pngPrimary URL Description: New York University Near East Studies panel announcement, Ottoman Empire and Global Modernism(s)
Secondary URL:
https://networks.h-net.org/node/11419/discussions/7553851/upcoming-panel-ottoman-empire-and-global-modernismsSecondary URL Description: H-Turk listserv notice
Conference Name: Ottoman Empire and Global Modernism(s)
Osmanlı İstanbul'unda Evlilik ve Boşanma / Marriage and Divorce in Ottoman Istanbul (Radio/Audio Broadcast or Recording)Title: Osmanlı İstanbul'unda Evlilik ve Boşanma / Marriage and Divorce in Ottoman Istanbul
Writer: Leyla Kayhan Elbirlik
Director: Sam Dolbee
Producer: Chris Gratien
Abstract: How did couples get married and divorced in the Ottoman Empire? Leyla Kayhan Elbirlik discusses marriage and divorce cases in Ottoman Istanbul, focusing on research that she completed by examining the records of Istanbul Bab, Davud Pasha and Ahi Çelebi courts between 1755-1840. While Elbirlik's research shows that women actively use the courts in matters related to marriage, divorce and property, it also reassesses the widespread perceptions about the role of women in the Ottoman family and society.
Date: 11/30/2019
Primary URL:
https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2019/11/evlilikvebosanma.htmlPrimary URL Description: podcast URL, in Turkish
Access Model: open access
Format: Web
Taming the pastoral: Late Ottoman public gardens established in the ‘new style’ (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Taming the pastoral: Late Ottoman public gardens established in the ‘new style’
Author: Berin Golonu
Abstract: Starting in the year 1870 a new type of public recreation space called “people’s garden” or millet bahçesi started to take root in the Ottoman Empire’s urban centers, from the Balkans to North Africa. These formally landscaped spaces took as their inspiration the Haussmann-era Parisian promenades designed in the “English style.” Proponents of the recreation movement in Europe advocated for the establishment of public parks to give residents of industrializing cities a respite from pollution and overcrowded slums. Calls for the necessity of new public gardens were concurrently being voiced by Ottoman municipal leaders as well as members of Ottoman civic society. Unlike the sprawling Bois de Boulogne or Bois de Vincennes, however, Istanbul’s new parks occupied a much smaller footprint, especially in relation to the city’s plentiful meadows or river banks that were already in use as popular sites of recreation. Ottoman government documents, newspaper articles, and personal memoirs provide documentation of the belief that these new public gardens would promote better public health and hygiene. Yet the establishment of these public gardens were less about giving urban residents much needed access to outdoor recreation and fresh air than about serving as symbols of Istanbul’s modern urban transformation. This paper looks at textual and visual documentation of some of first public gardens built in key Ottoman
cities in 1870, and contrasts them to longstanding Ottoman public recreation spaces and their aesthetic lineage. Studying Ottoman urban renewal in the late nineteenth century raises questions about public access, civic engagement, and the health of growing cities and their publics that are still relevant for urban centers caught in the grip of neoliberal transformation today.
Date: 12/03/2021
Primary URL:
https://mesana.org/mymesa/meeting_program_abs.php?pid=5ba86dac21aeaf233efcb6ec1b8c17ebPrimary URL Description: conference program
Conference Name: Middle East Studies Association, annual meeting 2021
The Emotional Bond between Early Modern Ottoman Children and Parents: A Case Study of Sünbülzade Vehbi’s ‘Ideal’ Child (1700–1800) (Book Section)Title: The Emotional Bond between Early Modern Ottoman Children and Parents: A Case Study of Sünbülzade Vehbi’s ‘Ideal’ Child (1700–1800)
Author: Leyla Kayhan Elbirlik
Editor: Fruma Zachs
Editor: Gulay Yilmaz
Abstract: Studies focusing on the history of childhood in the Ottoman world maintain that the extant sources allow for a limited view of how the idea of childhood was perceived in the early modern period. Compared to the sources of European history, historical accounts on Ottoman children and biographical narratives focusing on children’s lives are rare in the Ottoman context. Nevertheless the Shari‘ah court records and fatwa collections that reflect the daily concerns of the populace are primary documents that inform on children’s lives and attitudes toward childhood. These normative–theoretical sources offer only a partial view of children’s relationship to their surroundings, as well as their reception by society at large.
Year: 2021
Primary URL:
https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-children-and-childhood-in-the-ottoman-empire.htmlPrimary URL Description: publisher's presentation
Secondary URL:
https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474455411-010Secondary URL Description: link to Elbirlik's chapter
Access Model: book
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Book Title: Children and Childhood in the Ottoman Empire: From the 15th to the 20th Century
ISBN: 9789004468566
Neighborhood and Family Lives (Book Section)Title: Neighborhood and Family Lives
Author: Leyla Kayhan Elbirlik
Editor: Cigdem Kafescioglu
Editor: Shirine Hamadeh
Abstract: This chapter is predominantly concerned with the 18th century without overlooking the period between the 15th and 18th centuries, so as to provide readers with a comparative perspective. The first part focuses on the nature of the early modern neighborhood with regard to kinship ties, communal relationships, and individual agency. How were Istanbul’s neighborhoods formed? What were the ties between inhabitants of neighborhoods? What kind of influence did residents have over the moral and social composition of this space? Questions regarding the religious, ethnic, economic, and social allegiances that shaped the characteristics of neighborhoods are among the chapter’s larger concerns. The institution of family formed a central part of neighborhood life.
Year: 2021
Primary URL:
https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004468566_014Primary URL Description: publisher's presentation of the chapter
Secondary URL:
https://brill.com/view/title/59196?contents=editorial-contentSecondary URL Description: publisher's presentation of the book
Access Model: book, partially accessible
Publisher: Brill
Book Title: A Companion to Early Modern Istanbul, Series: Brill's Companions to European History 26
ISBN: 9789004468566
Cultivating Flowers and Loyal Subjects: A Case Study of the Iskodra Municipal Garden" (Blog Post)Title: Cultivating Flowers and Loyal Subjects: A Case Study of the Iskodra Municipal Garden"
Author: Berin Golonu
Abstract: Starting in the year 1870, a new type of public recreation space referred to as the “people’s garden” (millet bahçesi) or municipal garden (belediye bahçesi) took root in the Ottoman Empire’s cities and towns. There is a direct connection between the spread of the new public gardens and the expansion of modern infrastructure. Transportation linked communities more closely, but the new public gardens also became symbols of how urban or provincial public reform could benefit the local populace in the creation of public or semi-public space.
Date: 06/23/2021
Primary URL:
https://trafo.hypotheses.org/29482Primary URL Description: blogpost link
Secondary URL:
https://trafo.hypotheses.org/author/forumtransregionalestudienSecondary URL Description: blog category link
Blog Title: Infrastructures and Society in (Post-)Ottoman Geographies
Website: TRAFO - Blog for Transregional Research
Books and Hearsay: Reading Practices and Information in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: Books and Hearsay: Reading Practices and Information in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire
Abstract: Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano presents his project to uncover the dynamics of intellectual production and communication in the early modern Islamic world through the analysis of contemporary political debates and the material channels in which ideas circulated and thrived.
Author: Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano
Date: 12/10/2021
Location: Committee for the Study of Books and Media, History, Princeton University
Primary URL:
https://history.princeton.edu/news-events/events/committee-study-books-media-books-and-hearsay-reading-practices-and-informationPrimary URL Description: Lecture announcement
Oppressive Generosity, Compulsory Guesthood and the Politics of Hospitality in Turkey (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: Oppressive Generosity, Compulsory Guesthood and the Politics of Hospitality in Turkey
Abstract: This talk explores hospitality as a key discursive framework for refugee management in Turkey by focusing on how the rhetoric of host-guest relations are operationalized at the official level to represent, interpret, and problematize the current state of affairs regarding the Syrian refugees, as well as to formulate policies for solving those problems.
Author: Elif Babul
Date: 05/20/2021
Location: Sociology Department, Bogazici University, Istanbu
Primary URL:
http://takvim.boun.edu.tr/bu/?q=node/2522Primary URL Description: lecture announcement
Compulsory Guesthood, Social Cohesion, and the Politics of Hospitality in Turkey (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Compulsory Guesthood, Social Cohesion, and the Politics of Hospitality in Turkey
Author: Elif Babul
Abstract: This talk explores hospitality as a key discursive framework for refugee management in Turkey by focusing on how the rhetoric of host-guest relations are operationalized at the official level to represent, interpret, and problematize the current state of affairs regarding the Syrian refugees, as well as to formulate policies for solving those problems. Host-guest metaphors are used to assert power and leverage both domestically and internationally by exerting sovereign control over a post-imperial nation-space, performing neo-imperial guardianship over the downtrodden (especially within the Muslim umma), and claiming an ethno-religious, civilizational morality that exceeds the legalistic logic of human rights and entitlements.
Date: 06/07/2022
Primary URL:
https://amimo.hypotheses.org/1151Primary URL Description: event announcement
Secondary URL:
https://amimo.hypotheses.org/category/seminaire/2022Secondary URL Description: Issues on Migration Seminar webpage
Conference Name: Institut Français d'Études Anatoliennes
Bread Money: Musical Training and Transmission among Roman (“Gypsy”) Professional Music Families (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: Bread Money: Musical Training and Transmission among Roman (“Gypsy”) Professional Music Families
Abstract: Roman (“Gypsy”) musicians constitute at least 80% of Turkey’s professional musician laborers. Less well-known is the fact that most of these musicians are members of long-term professional musician families whose origins hail from outside of Turkey: mostly Greece and Bulgaria. In addition their musical training is structured by in-family esnaf or guild-training methods, which produce musicians that can serve multiple musical genres (regional/folk/ritual, entertainment, studio, state ensembles, court/urban as well as folk). What are the features of this training that enable musicians to survive today's changing economic structures and diverse political networks? How do their layered identities as Roma, Turkish, Selanikli muhacir/Bulgarian göçmen also intersect with their regional affiliations? How are such affiliations performed in strategic responses to economic conditions and client-patron relationships?
Author: Sonia Seeman
Date: 09/13/2022
Location: ARIT Istanbul
Primary URL:
https://aritweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Seeman-Roma-musicians.pdfPrimary URL Description: Lecture announcement
Roundtable: Reading Practices and Contexts in the Early Ottoman Empire (Conference/Institute/Seminar)Title: Roundtable: Reading Practices and Contexts in the Early Ottoman Empire
Author: Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano
Abstract: Aguirre-Mandujano organized and participated in this discussion of reading practices and contexts in the early Ottoman Empire, with five other scholars.
His paper noted one of the most interesting examples about Ottoman reading practices that comes from a small introduction to the transliteration of a selection from Mesihi’s epistolary. Mesihi was a poet and bureaucrat at the turn of the sixteenth century who compiled around a hundred letters into one single volume, the Rose of a Hundred Petals. Mesihi’s work was among other compilations of Ottoman high prose. Historian V. L. Menage notes that Mesihi’s work is only mentioned in one of the sixteenth century biographical dictionaries of poets, Latifí´s Tezkiretü´l-şuara —one of the most important sources for reconstructing the lives and works of early modern Ottoman poets and scholars. Latifi describes Mesihi’s work as being similar to another fifteenth century manual for letter writing. The books are not at all similar, thus Menage concludes from this comparison that Latifi clearly had not seen the actual book. This remark by Menage highlights an interesting, if unintended point: how little we know about how Ottoman learned men talked about books, even when they might not have read them. In my work, I argue that knowing and talking about books and literary works did not always required physical reading and study, or even seeing the actual book. In this roundtable, I will focus on biographical dictionaries of poets and discuss what they tell us about practices of reading and not reading. I will raise two points for consideration: First, the access, use, and management of information required for the creation of the biographical dictionaries. Second, what practices of knowing (oral, communal, book reading) can be seen when reading biographical dictionaries, poems, and introductions to literary works that shed light on how Ottomans talked about books.
Date Range: November 29, 2021
Location: online, Middle East Studies Association Meeting, November 2021
Primary URL:
https://mesana.org/pdf/MESA2021.pdfPrimary URL Description: program of the 55th annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, November 29 - December 3, 2021, page 23.
The Poetics of Istanbul: The City of Cities (Book Section)Title: The Poetics of Istanbul: The City of Cities
Author: Walter Andrews
Author: Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano
Editor: Cigdem Kafescioglu
Editor: Shirine Hamadeh
Abstract: In reality, early modern Istanbul was a city defined, organized, and made meaningful by poetry. Every era is marked by many hundreds of elite poets, popular versifiers, court performers and coffeehouse minstrels. In this chapter, the authors sketch a “poetics” of early modern Istanbul that theorizes, with examples, the way in which Istanbul can be seen as a psychological construct organized and made meaningful by an unusually extensive and intimate engagement with poetry.
Year: 2021
Primary URL:
https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004468566_027Primary URL Description: link to chapter
Secondary URL:
https://brill.com/view/title/59196Secondary URL Description: link to book
Access Model: book
Publisher: Brill
Book Title: A Companion to Early Modern Istanbul
ISBN: 978-90-04-4449
Metaphors, Conjectures, and Opinions: Talking about Books in Early Modern Ottoman Texts (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: Metaphors, Conjectures, and Opinions: Talking about Books in Early Modern Ottoman Texts
Abstract: This talk focuses on how Ottomans talked about books in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Ottoman Empire was a heavily manuscript-oriented society and the imperial administration left behind an immense paper trial. Yet, while many manuscripts circulated in Ottoman lands since the fourteenth century, access to books was not always easy. Ottoman scholars often learned about books not by reading them but by talking about them. Hearsay allowed for the transmission of knowledge around the material text, usually by reporting on the contents of a book that a scholar did not have access to, but that was somehow relevant to what he was writing. Through the analysis of biographical dictionaries and other literary works of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, I show that there were forms of communication other than written texts that predetermined what was put into writing, and that they might not have existed in opposition to each other, as in the dichotomy between oral and written, but indeed depended on each other. In other words, I will argue that texts and information were expected to occur in the performance of both the written text and oral communication, between the formal register and the informal interaction, and that oral communication had an important impact in how people remembered texts.
Author: Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano
Date: 03/13/2023
Location: University of Pennsylvania Workshop in the History of Material Texts
Primary URL:
https://pennmaterialtexts.org/about/events/Primary URL Description: event announcement
Secondary URL:
https://pennmaterialtexts.org/homepageSecondary URL Description: workshop home page
Poetry and Imagination: Ottoman Poetry as Islamic Poetry (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Poetry and Imagination: Ottoman Poetry as Islamic Poetry
Author: Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano
Abstract: The early modern cities of Anatolia were grounded culturally, spiritually, and emotionally in institutions and practices of a fundamentally Neoplatonic Islamic mysticism/sufism that saw tangible material reality as the grounded in a primal unity of existence. Dr. Aguirre Mandujano explores the Islamic expression of that viewpoint through the poetry of the period.
Date: 04/01/2022
Primary URL:
https://wolfhumanities.upenn.edu/events/beyond-rose-and-nightingalePrimary URL Description: link to conference program
Words that are Daggers (Book Section)Title: Words that are Daggers
Author: Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano
Editor: Zeynep Uysal
Editor: Didem Havlioğlu
Abstract:
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429279270Year: 2023
Primary URL:
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429279270Primary URL Description: link to book page
Access Model: online, paywall
Publisher: Routledge
Book Title: Routledge Handbook on Turkish Literature
ISBN: 9780429279270
The Bazar of Separation: Culture, Emotions, and Philosophy in Ottoman Poetry and Lexicon (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: The Bazar of Separation: Culture, Emotions, and Philosophy in Ottoman Poetry and Lexicon
Author: Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano
Abstract: How are we to translate a poet’s wail for the impossible distance between himself and his beloved? Is it enough to call separation what makes the lover’s liver burn? Or are we to think of a more explicit way to translate all the meanings and implications of the Ottoman word firak, that implies a whole ecology of love within a poem? In this paper, I focus on poems that feature firak (separation) as their theme. I explore the same poem through three lenses, cultural history, the history of emotions, and history of philosophy, three approaches that Walter Andrews explored through his work. Andrews’s work not only recognized the social power of Ottoman poetry, its specificity and complexity, but also attempted to translate it in contemporary theoretical and scholarly terms. Taking cultural and historical explanation as central to any attempt of translation, I will discuss different approaches to making Ottoman poetry intelligible to contemporary readers, ranging from the literary translation to the cultural explanation, the study of emotions and the history of philosophical interpretations.
Date: 11/04/2023
Primary URL:
http://https://mesana.org/pdf/MESA2023_Program_Final1018_1.pdfPrimary URL Description: MESA annual meeting program 2023
Secondary URL:
https://www.aatturkic.org/aatt-panel-at-mesa2023Secondary URL Description: American Association of Teachers of Turkic Languages annual meeting, A Panel in Memory of Walter Andrews: Prospects and Challenges in Ottoman Turkish Studies in North America
Conference Name: Middle East Studies Association annual meeting 2023, AATT panel
Compulsory guesthood, social cohesion, and the politics of hospitality in Turkey (Article)Title: Compulsory guesthood, social cohesion, and the politics of hospitality in Turkey
Author: Elif Babul
Abstract: This article explores hospitality as a key rhetorical framework for refugee management in Turkey by focusing on how host-guest relations are mobilized to represent, interpret, and problematize the current state of affairs regarding Syrian refugees, as well as to formulate policies. It analyses the transformation of hospitality rhetoric, the notion of ‘compulsory guesthood’, and the most recent social cohesion initiatives. I argue that host-guest metaphors are used to assert power and leverage both domestically and internationally by exerting sovereign control over a post-imperial nation-space, performing neo-imperial guardianship over the downtrodden, and claiming an ethno-religious, civilizational morality that exceeds the legalistic logic of human rights and entitlements.
Year: 2023
Primary URL:
https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.14063Primary URL Description: Link to article
Access Model: pay wall
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Publisher: Royal Anthropological Institute
An Uncanny Discourse on Sex and Marriage from the Early Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Empire (Book Section)Title: An Uncanny Discourse on Sex and Marriage from the Early Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Empire
Author: Selim Kuru
Author: Leyla Kayhan Elbirlik
Editor: Ali Yaycioglu
Editor: Selim Kuru
Editor: Rachel Goshgarian
Editor: Ilham Khuri-Makdisi
Abstract: This book chapter presents translation of a chapter on sexuality and marriage from an early 16th century collection of sexually explicit stories and jokes and provides an analysis of the chapter from the perspectives of history and genre…
Our decision to focus on the first chapter of this intricate “mock treatise” on the topic of marriage and sexuality that was written in the fashion of Islamicate treatises of conduct (adab) is due, in part to the fact that it sets the tone for the rest of the work, and, also, because of our common preoccupation with marriage as it was experienced and imagined in the early modern ottoman context. While the text at hand is an unconventional work of fiction it reveals not only the routine practices related to marriage and sexuality but the idiosyncrasies and anxieties surrounding them. After a brief introductory discussion of marriage and sexuality in early modern archival and literary sources that are unique for learning about these practices, this article presents a revised translation of the Dafı’ü’l-ghumum ve rafı’ü’l-hummum’s first chapter.
Year: 2023
Primary URL:
https://www.academicstudiespress.com/9781644698488/Primary URL Description: Academic Studies Press announcement
Secondary URL:
https://melc.washington.edu/research/essays-articles-and-book-chapters/uncanny-discourse-sex-and-marriageSecondary URL Description: University of Washington notice of article
Access Model: paid publication
Publisher: Academic Studies Press
Book Title: Crafting History: Essays on the Ottoman World and Beyond in Honor of Cemal Kafadar
ISBN: 9781644698464
From Bread to Money: Musicking, Labor and Work (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: From Bread to Money: Musicking, Labor and Work
Abstract: Turkish Roman (“Gypsy”) musicians’ work has long been marked as a process that shapes one’s subjectivity, as encapsulated in the old adage “musicianship is the mold that shapes the bread” (müzisyenlik ekmek teknesidir). But since the latter 20th century, most musicians now quip, “musicianship is bread money” (müzisyenlik ekmek parasıdır) characterizing their work as “the struggle for bread” (ekmek davası). I argue that such semantic shifts reflect changes in craft systems, commodification and capital extraction that signify proliferating forms of alienating labor structures. Synthesized from 25 years of fieldwork this research draws from in-depth ethnographic co-witnessing, oral history and archival resources that explore over 100 years of musical labor and work practices among four Turkish Roman professional musician families. The questions raised in this study explore the productive work of creating musical expressions while responding to shifting political, economic and social structures. The narratives and experiences of these professional musician families invite conversations with philosophical and Marxist materialist perspectives of labor/work/craftsmanship, affect studies, theories of embodiment and cultural identity practices.
Author: Sonia Seeman
Date: 01/25/2023
Location: University of California, Los Angeles, Herb Alpert School of Music
Primary URL:
https://goarts.ucla.edu/events/from-bread-to-money-musicking-labor-and-workPrimary URL Description: Event announcement
The Violinists’ Bread: Migration, Diaspora and Musicking from Ottoman Greece to Modern Turkey (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: The Violinists’ Bread: Migration, Diaspora and Musicking from Ottoman Greece to Modern Turkey
Abstract: ‘An estimated 80% of Turkish professional musical services are provided by Roman (“Gypsy”) professional musicians who develop their skills within deep lineages of professional in-family guild training. These musicians play for hours over days, seemingly effortlessly crafting rhythmic melodies that inspire dance movements, transform social relations in ritual acts, signal prestige, constitute community and re-make social divisions. Yet attention to the sound of that which musicians produce detracts from ethical inquiries regarding the musicians themselves. Working relentlessly from ages 13 to illness and death often in their 50s, these musicians are deeply shaped by the physical as well as mental demands of their profession. Their instruments of labor in fact instrumentalize their very existence. And such existences are also shaped by changing political, geographic, social and increasingly capitalist economic structures. Roman musicians who once quipped that musicianship “is the mold that shapes their bread” now say that their craft is “bread money”, noting the heightened alienation of extracted forms of their labor. How can we explore such issues while preserving the vehemence of musicians’ own experiences and life pathways? This talk investigates these phenomena in an interactive format. After setting out the larger questions, we invite your curiosity as we travel alongside narratives, documents and sounds collected from the case study of one Romani professional musician family. Your questions will follow our musician guides as we traverse the pathways, structures and processes of musical laboring over time and space from early 20th century to the present, from Greece to Turkish towns, to musical centers in Istanbul and resonating out into the regional music industries of the current post-Fordist world. While focusing on musicians, the subject here concerns larger regional issues of geopolitical ideologies, economic shifts, and reshaping the social through labor.
Author: Sonia Seeman
Date: 1/24/2023
Location: University of California, Riverside Department of Music and the Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Program
Primary URL:
https://events.ucr.edu/event/the_violinists_bread_migration_diaspora_and_musicking_from_ottoman_greece_to_modern_turkeyPrimary URL Description: Event announcement
The Migrants and Occupants of Istanbul's New ‘Nation's Gardens’ (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: The Migrants and Occupants of Istanbul's New ‘Nation's Gardens’
Author: Berin Golonu
Abstract: In response to protests against the overdevelopment of Istanbul and the privatization of its public spaces, Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) announced their initiative to build more public parks in cities across the country. Rather than calling them public parks, it chose a late-Ottoman-era name for these spaces. They were called “millet bahçeleri,” literally translated as “the gardens of the people of a nation.” The decision to utilize a late Ottoman era term points to the neo-Ottomanist ideologies of the AKP, and suggests the desire to locate a model of economic growth and urban reform that predates the formation of the Turkish Republic. Since 2018, several new “nation's gardens” have been established within the new high-rise communities popping up in Istanbul’s expanding periphery. While the gardens are billed as efforts to alleviate the social and ecological ailments of Istanbul’s unbridled growth, in fact, they are an outgrowth of urban development and redevelopment plans that displace residents from the city center and further contribute to urban sprawl. These projects are fueled by the construction and tourism sector and real estate speculation to feed a failing national economy. This paper compares the design and use of these new "nation's gardens" to the appearance and use of more longstanding recreational greenspaces in Istanbul to discuss how the more historical sites serve as containers of Istanbul's cultural identity, its histories and its natural habitats. Yet the government's quest to constantly rehabilitate and "revitalize" these more historical greenspaces--often upholding the aesthetics of the newly constructed and neatly landscaped "nation's gardens" as a model--threatens to sever their connection to urban history and damage their existence as natural habitats for non-human species.
Date: 12/02/2022
Primary URL:
https://my-mesa.org/program/sessions/view/eyJpdiI6IkFaU1BtWFcrUE9TSFVyOW5ZMVoxbEE9PSIsInZhbHVlIjoiRnhkZE5tRWpZV2RKZ1ZFeThxRHpDdz09IiwibWFjIjoiOGQ4NjE3NzBhMWQxYmJkMWJiMTI1YjA1MDEyMDk0MWJiNmEzNDc1OTljYjg5NTMwNDY0Y2Y1MmU3OWU2MjQxNyIsInRhZyI6IiJ9Primary URL Description: Meeting program
Secondary URL:
https://my-mesa.org/program/abstracts/view/eyJpdiI6ImRrUUtXOXZlei9RaHRRTkQycjlkc2c9PSIsInZhbHVlIjoiRWJzU3g4ZEphS2dnS0tQWDRpMFp4Zz09IiwibWFjIjoiOTA4NDJjOWIxOWJiNWQ4YTRjOTMzMTFiMDZlZmE4MWQzMjI1ZjY3MzZkMDdiYTg4MTQ2YjhjNzI4ZTUzMmRhZiIsInRhZyI6IiJ9Secondary URL Description: Paper abstract
Conference Name: Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting 2022