Historical Continuities, Political Responsibilities: Unsettling Conceptual Blind-Spots in Ottoman and Turkish Studies
Graduate Student Conference
May 4-5, 2007
New York University and The Graduate Center, CUNY
unsettling.blindspots@gmail.com
As the historiography of the Ottoman Empire is still mostly excluded from the history of Europe, or only addressed as one of a formative 'other', this conference wants to bring into dialogue graduate students who are faced with the particular fall-outs of Ottoman historiography with regard to Turkey and the Middle East as well as the Balkans and Eastern Europe, where scholarship has predominantly focused on issues of post-socialism and Europeanization. Historically and conceptually rooted in the discipline of orientalist studies, much of the scholarship on regions formerly subsumed under different forms of Ottoman governance, be they in Europe or the Middle East, draws on a body of work that Talal Asad an Roger Owen aptly described to have sought to understand "non-European rule" "by looking for absent kinds of concepts 'liberty', 'progress', 'humanism' which are supposed to be distinctive of Western civilization" (1980, 35). More than 26 years later, the engagements with Edward Said's critique of Orientalism notwithstanding, this perspective has perpetuated a set of standardized narratives, such as the notion of "belated modernity", which has become an explanatory model for almost all political, economic and social problems throughout the Balkans, Turkey and the Middle East.
Through a rigorous discussion of the most prominent and central arguments on the transition from empires to nation-states, this workshop aims to break away from evaluations of the Ottoman Empire as well as the historical trajectory of its successor states that continue to operate along well-criticized dichotomous notions such as "tradition and modernity", "religious and secular", "East and West". These concepts are employed in official state-narratives and academic discourses alike, although with often diametrically opposed intentions. This workshop is particularly intended to problematize the political and academic implications that this parallelism produces in regard to understanding the history of the Ottoman Empire as well as that of its former territories. We invite participants to critically examine how these concepts have been, and are, operationalized in both theory and practice when it comes to issues such as "nationalism", "citizenship", "multiculturalism", "ethnic conflict", "identity", "secularism", "democratization", "state sovereignty" and the like.
Although sessions will be organized around the themes of submitted papers, one major emphasis will be on present-day Turkey. Here, we are particularly concerned with the many blind-spots that the conceptual framework of Ottoman and Turkish studies has created and perpetuated, among them the myth of radical rupture between the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, the obscuration of the religious, ethnic and linguistic diversity of Anatolia through "retrospective Turkification", and the silences surrounding different forms of state violence -- such as the history of military coups, the Armenian genocide, the internal displacement of Kurds, and other measures of "population engineering". This workshop also seeks to question the ways in which critical approaches in the social sciences have recently attempted to change the public perception of Turkey's official historiography, while at the same time staying circumscribed by the very conceptual framework of the standardized narratives they seek to subvert.
For this interdisciplinary workshop, we invite contributions from graduate students in the social sciences and humanities whose work grapples with the above outlined conceptual limitations and blind-spots permeating the majority of Ottoman and Turkish Studies as well as related fields. Proposals need not necessarily be limited to present-day Turkey, and we look forward to submissions covering former Ottoman Empire territories. Finally, we encourage proposals that not only aim to advance alternative theoretical approaches, for instance, by employing a comparative framework, but that are also sensitive to the political implications and responsibilities of academic works in this area.
Abstracts should be between 200-300 words and are due on March 18, 2007.
Applicants will be notified within one week after the deadline. The workshop will take place from May 4-5, 2007 at New York University and the Graduate Center, CUNY.
Please also provide a brief biography (200 word max), including current academic affiliation and research interests.
This initial workshop is conceptualized as an exploratory discussion ground for a publication and an accompanying conference planned for early 2008.
Abstracts and inquiries should be addressed to <unsettling.blindspots@gmail.com>.
Conference Organizers
Ozan Aksoy, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Music(Graduate Center, CUNY, New York)
Arman Artuc, Editor, Hye Tert News Portal
Bedross Der Matossian, Ph.D. Candidate, Department for Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures (Columbia University, New York)
Ayda Erbal, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Politics (New York University, New York)
Banu Karaca, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Cultural Anthropology (Graduate Center, CUNY, New York)
Ceren Özgül, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Cultural Anthropology (Graduate Center, CUNY, New York).
Conference Program
Friday May 4, 2007
NYU
8:45am Breakfast/Registration/Introduction
9:30am Welcome
9:45-11:30am Between Culture and Rights: Minorities in the
Ottoman Empire and Turkey
Discussant: Rıfat Bali (Independent Scholar)
Elizabeth Angell, (Independent Scholar)
“Inventing Hatay: Diversity and History in the Sanjak of Alexandretta”
İlker Cörüt (Boğaziçi University)
“A Critical Survey of Recent Literature on Non-Muslim Minorities in Ottoman-Turkish Historiography”
Ozan Aksoy (GC/CUNY)
“Blindspots in Music Scholarship of the Ottoman Era and Turkish Republic”
Öznur Akkuş (Independent Scholar)
“Strategies and memory in the aftermath of Genocide: The Armenians of Dersim”
Kabir Tambar (University of Chicago)
11:45-1:00pm Center? Periphery?: Examples from Eastern
Europe and the Caucasus
Discussant: Professor Kate Fleming (NYU)
Sabrina Peric (Harvard University)
“Subterranean encounters: geological landscapes and the political life of the Western Balkans”
Leyla Amzi (Columbia University)
“Identity and Migration in the Late Ottoman Period: The Case of Bosnian Muslims 1878 – 1914”
Mary Taylor (GC/CUNY)
“Silences and Amplifications on the Turkic Past in Hungary”
1:30-2:30pm Brownbag Talk with Professor Talal Asad
(for conference participants only, room tba)
3:00-4:45pm Critiques of National Historiographies
Discussant: Harris Mylonas (Yale University)
Peter Valenti (NYU)
Sanem Güvenç-Salgırlı (SUNY Binghamton)
“Which State, Which Modernity? Specters of Nationalism in Turkish Historiography since the 1990s”
Seçil Yılmaz (Boğaziçi University)
“Neo-Conservative Memory in Exhibition: Miniaturk”
Onur Özgöde (Columbia University)
Semi Ertan (University of Michigan)
“An Armenian at the Parliament in the early Republican Period: Berç Türker-Keresteciyan (1870-1949)”
5:00-6:30pm Panel Discussion
Critical Inquiries into Emerging Discourses of Reconciliation in Turkey
Panel Chair: Bilgin Ayata (Johns Hopkins University)
Discussant: Marc Mamigonian (NAASR)
Ayda Erbal (NYU)
Banu Karaca (GC/CUNY)
“Aestheticizing Reconciliation: Between Empathy and Responsibility”
Arman Artuç (Editor, Hyetert)
“Selective Reconciliation: Where do the Istanbul Armenians fit in?”
Khatchig Mouradian (Haigazian University, Beirut -Editor, The Armenian Weekly, Boston
7:00pm Reception
Saturday May 5, 2007
Graduate Center, CUNY
9:30-11:00am Beyond the Division of Islamic and Secular Law
Discussant: Christine Hegel (GC/CUNY)
Saneta DeVouno Powell (University of California at Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law)
Nada Moumtaz (GC/CUNY)
Faik Umut Őzsu (University of Toronto, Faculty of Law)
Ceren Özgül (GC/CUNY)
11:15-12:45pm Movements of Capital and the Politics of Class
Discussant: Professor Donald Robotham (GC/CUNY)
Christian Sassmanshausen (Free University Berlin)
"Studying Urban Networks and Family Strategies in Late Ottoman Tripoli (Lebanon)"
Burak Gürel (Bogazici University/Yale University)
Şahan Savaş Karataşlı (Johns Hopkins University)
Bedross Der Matossian (Columbia University)
“The Taboo within the Taboo: The Fate of the 'Armenian Capital' in the end of the Ottoman Empire."
12:45-2pm Lunch
2pm-3:45pm Belated Modernization?
Discussant: Professor Christine Philliou (Columbia University)
Zeynep Gönen (SUNY Binghamton)
“Punishment, policing and regulation in Turkey, from the late nineteenth century to the present”
Nurçin İleri (Boğaziçi University)
“The Illumination of the Istanbul Streets at the Turn of the Century”
Kadir Üstün (Columbia University)
“Rethinking the Origins of Ottoman and Turkish Modernization”
Mehmet Döşemeci (Columbia University)
“Talking Turkey about Europe: The EEC and the Turkish Socio-imaginary”
Nurullah Ardıç (UCLA)
Islam and Secularism in Turkey: Confrontation or Accommodation?
4pm Wrap-up and Open Plenary
This conference is sponsored by: