Dear colleagues,
We're pleased to advertise the following event at Leeds, 18 June, 4-6, with a wine reception!
Kate Roy and Stuart Taberner
Leeds
The Fascination of the Ottoman Empire? Lecture by Nina Berman, Professor of Comparative Literature, Ohio State University
German at Leeds and the Cultural Exchange research theme (LHRI) are pleased to announce a public lecture by
Professor Nina Berman (Ohio State University)
Wednesday 18 June, 16:00-18:00
Michael Sadler Building, Seminar Room LG.15
University of Leeds
The Cool Empire: German Turcomania in the 17th and 18th centuries
Contemporary discussions of the long-term relationship between Europe and the Middle East generally assume that this relationship was antagonistic and that Europe's idea of Middle Eastern culture was largely negative. Evidence from various areas of culture, including artifacts, goods, cultural practices, and representations, however, challenges these beliefs. For instance, Europeans, including Germans, were fascinated with the Ottoman Empire in the time period under discussion in this talk. In German areas, the fascination with things Ottoman increased throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a result of the Ottoman invasions, and occurred in spite of the fact that German countries continued to fight the Ottoman Empire until the end of the eighteenth century. By exploring the interplay between German textual discourses and social, political, and economic practices and materiality, Professor Berman's analysis offers insights that challenge accepted approaches to the study of literature, particularly approaches that insist on the centrality of the linguistic construction of the world.
We also welcome respondents Dr James Hodkinson (University of Warwick) and Dr Frauke Matthes (University of Edinburgh), who will follow Professor Berman’s narrative through the long nineteenth century and up to the present day.
Enemies, Others and Brothers: Concepts and Images of Ottoman Turkey in the Culture and Politics of the German Speaking World, 1800 -1918
Dr Hodkinson’s response offers a critical overview of representations of Ottoman Turks and Turkey in the form of travel writing, popular adventure stories, as well as within academic Oriental studies and political discourse, and even in architecture, from c. 1800 to 1918. Across this wide cultural spectrum, and in the context of the (at times quite differing) national and imperial politics of German and Austria, the image of Turkey is manipulated to carry a range of divergent cultural-political functions. Turkey and the Turks appear to oscillate between being the desired others, the despised or derided rivals, and the expedient allies of the German speaking world, propelled back and forth between constructions of “Occident” and “Orient”.
From Gastarbeiter to Turkish Germans: The Turkish Presence in Contemporary Germany
The twentieth century witnessed increasing contact between Turkey and Germany, in part shaped by established images of an exoticised “Orient” but arguably more so by old tensions between “the Orient” and “the West”. Dr Matthes’ response questions whether “Turcomania” is still a useful term to describe the interaction between Germans and Turks, the “Other” that is no longer at a safe distance but entered Germany in increasing numbers as guest workers in the 1960s. More recently, political developments within Germany, alongside global events such as 9/11, have triggered a focus on the religious rather than ethnic identity of Turkish migrants and their children. In illustrating how these socio-political debates have entered German(-Turkish) culture, Dr Matthes draws on examples from works by German authors and filmmakers of Turkish descent.
This event will be followed by a wine reception sponsored by the British Comparative Literature Association.
Further information from Professor Stuart Taberner ([log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>) and Dr Kate Roy ([log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>), SMLC
Dr Kate Roy
Lecturer in German
School of Modern Languages and Cultures
University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT
U.K.
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