by Peter Cherry
Attracting an audience of around 80 people from as far away as Australia and the US, the Travellers in Ottoman Lands seminar included a range of papers from colleagues across the UK and Türkiye.
Kicking off the event was a keynote address by Ahmet Ersoy from Boğaziçi University, who spoke on The Camera and the Notebook: Photographic Excursions in Late Ottoman Illustrated Images, chaired by ARIT Istanbul Director Dr Zeynep Simavi. Dr Ersoy’s paper used travel writing, stories, and photography to explore the combined impact of nineteenth-century technologies of mobility (the train, the steamship, and the bicycle) and visuality (photography and photomechanical reproduction) on late Ottoman visions of imperial space and its historical past. In particular, Dr Ersoy drew on the illustrated travel diary and notebook as a new form of literature that emerged with travel and how this shaped collective memory and understandings of Ottoman imperial identities.
This approach led the way for a rich day of presentations that spanned disciplines such as fashion history, art, architecture, archaeology, literature, and food studies, from a dazzling array of contexts, including texts and sources written in English, Ottoman Turkish, French, Dutch, Italian, German, Persian, and Arabic.
The second day opened with a keynote address from Reina Lewis at the University of the Arts London, chaired by BIAA Assistant Director Dr Peter Cherry. Professor Lewis’ paper explored the importance of Western and Ottoman women’s travel writing and harem literature for understanding Ottoman dress and society. Particularly innovative was Professor Lewis’ use of contemporary fashion theories and ‘aesthetic labour’ (the recruitment, management and direction of employees based on their physical appearance) to engage with how ideas of fashion were transmitted across Ottoman society, adapted for different social contexts, such as when dressing enslaved bodies.
Professor Lewis’ talk introduced a day of talks which focused on gender, cultural heritage and memory, religion and spirituality, and diplomatic and war histories. The day closed with a special guest presentation from Dr Nancy Micklewright, previously Head of Public and Scholarly Engagement at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art and now a Fulbright Senior Research Grant holder at the Istanbul branch of American Research in Turkey. Dr Micklewright spoke on British and American records of enslavement in Ottoman harems.
The third day began with two final panels focusing on Christian-Muslim encounters, economic and trade history and the history of academic research and writing on Ottoman regions. This was followed by three talks and a guided tour of the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery. The BIAA Assistant Director, Dr Peter Cherry, chaired introductory papers on the history of the cemetery, the foundation of the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery Initiative (to which the BIAA is an active member) and two papers exploring notable figures buried in the cemetery. Dr Richard Wittman, Deputy Director at the Orient Institut Istanbul, and Dr Brian Johnson, Librarian at ARIT Istanbul, then led attendees on a tour of the cemetery pointing out figures of interest, which included pioneers in the history of beer brewing in the Ottoman Empire, former ambassadors, translators and a drug smuggler!
For the most conscientious attendees, the seminar concluded on Saturday with a guided tour of the Emirgan Tulip Gardens, where Sabancı University PhD student Mert Pekdoğdu spoke about the significance of the tulip in Ottoman history, covering its political, botanical, and economic aspects.
Like all research gatherings, Travellers in Ottoman Lands had been months in planning and organisation. While I returned to Ankara feeling a little tired, I can say that I was buzzing with new information, contacts and enriching conversations. It has been a deeply rewarding experience, and one aspect of this has been getting to know so many colleagues well. I want to say a huge thank you to the other organisers: Paul and Janet Starkey (Durham University), Marloes Cornelissen Aydemir (Sabancı University), Zeynep Simavi (American Research in Turkey), Fokke Gerritsen and Aysel Arslan (Netherlands Institute in Turkey), Jennifer Scarce (Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East), Julie Witford (Cornucopia) and Ines Asceric-Todd (University of Edinburgh). Another big thank you is due to Olof Heilo (Swedish Institute in Istanbul) for hosting Professor Lewis at the guesthouse in Istanbul.
Discussions about the afterlife of the Travellers in Ottoman Lands seminar are still ongoing, but the committee is planning to publish a selection of peer-reviewed papers. For further information, contact ottomanlands@gmail.com