A Gendered Perspective for Ottoman Urban History
Women and the City, Women in the City: A Gendered Perspective for
Ottoman Urban History
27 - 28 May 2010, Berlin
Venue: Ballhaus Naunynstraße (Naunynstraße 27, 10997 Berlin)
Convened by Nazan Maksudyan (Fellow of EUME 2009/2010)
Regarding the traditional and well-established gendered participation
and representation in the public sphere, urban history, in parallel
with many other subfields of history, might tend to focus more on his
story rather than her stories. However, growing and expanding
scholarship on the history of women of the last few decades
demonstrated the importance of recognizing the agency of women, and
thus, the necessity of introducing their roles as relevant into the
larger picture. Historians started to acknowledge women as
manipulating, if not shaping, urban space. Women did more than react
to alterations in urban space: They actively participated in changing
the map of the city and in redefining its essence.
It is true that diverse groups of women approached the city from
different angles, with distinct intents, and with unequal pace. The
relationship between women and the public space was an intricate one,
defined along the lines of class, ethnic and religious identity, age,
and historical moment. Heterogeneous everyday experiences and domestic
spaces of women determined their relation to and presence in public
arenas. For that matter, women from different class, religious, ethnic
or immigrant backgrounds also had manifold linkages within themselves
and with the urban space. Furthermore, the city was more than its
economic and ethnic geography; urban sexual geography crosscut them,
in both ideological and physical terms. For instance, the presence of
elite women in working-class neighborhoods would be a breach of proper
sexual geography, since only working women and prostitutes (having a
thin line in-between) were allowed there. Thus, definitions of class,
gender, ethnicity, and sexuality were all intermixed in the urban
geography. However, women from diverse backgrounds succeeded in
challenging and negotiating the overimbued sexual division of urban
space. Both through rivalries and alliances amongst themselves, they
formed new urban relations and spaces and empowered themselves to have
a say in changing the urban structure regarding neighborhoods,
streets, schools, workplaces, legal regulations, and public spaces.
In that respect, the workshop attempts to reveal, recover and
reconsider the roles, positions, and actions of women in the midst of
altered, or redefined economic, social, political, and cultural
contexts of the late- and post-Ottoman cities. It reconsiders the
negotiations, alliances, and agency of women in asserting themselves
in the public domain, in which even today they are faced with
obstacles and resistance as legitimate actors. In cities, neither
designed for nor controlled by women, women had to reimagine and
reconceive the city before they would create female-controlled public
and semipublic spaces.
27 May, 20127 2010
Opening (10.00 – 11.00)
Ulrike Freitag (Director of the ZMO) – “Welcome”
Nazan Maksudyan (Fellow of EUME 2009/2010) – “Women in the City, the City
of Women”
Coffee Break (11.00 – 11.30)
Session 1. Women and the City: Reorganization of Urban Life Late Ottoman
Empire
Part 1. (11.30 – 13.00)
Chair: Dyala Hamzah (ZMO)
Iris Agmon (Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheva) – “Women in Late-Ottoman
Palestinian Cities and the Unresolved Question of Mute Historical Voices”
Ulrike Freitag (Director of the ZMO) – “Women in Late Ottoman Jeddah”
Nora Lafi (ZMO) - “Late Ottoman and Early Republican Visions of North
African Women: Between Ottomanity and a New Turkish Orientalism”
Lunch Break (13.00 – 14.30)
Part 2. (14.30 – 16.00)
Chair: Marc Baer (California, Irvine/ZMO)
Gülhan Balsoy (Isýk University, Istanbul) – “Gendering the Urban
Transformation in the Late Nineteenth Century Istanbul: The Case of Haseki
Women’s Hospital and Maternity Clinic (Viladethane)”
Nil Birol (Central European University, Budapest) – “'What is the
Imperial End to Us?': A Gendered Perspective from the Russian Tatar
Women to the
Ottoman Elite Women in 1910s Istanbul”
Keynote Speech (18.00 – 19.00)
Leyla NeyzLeyla Neyzi (Sabancý University, Istanbul) – “Tesvikiye: The
Making of an Elite Neighborhood and Narratives of Nostalgia in Istanbul”
Film-screening and discussion (19.00 – 20.00)
Remembering and Forgetting in the City: Finding Zabel Yesayan (directed by
Talin Suciyan & Lara Aharonian)
28 May, 2010
Session 2. Women in the City: Redefinition of Gender in Post-Ottoman
Cities
Part 1. (09.30 – 11.00)
Chair: Munir Fakher Eldin (Fellow of EUME 2009/2010)
Sevgi Adak (Leiden University, Amsterdam) – “Women and Unveiling in the
Post- Ottoman Public Sphere: Secularist Reforms and Women’s Agency in
Early Republican Turkey”
Ellinor Morack (FU Berlin) – “Challenging Established Concepts of Identity
and Belonging: Population Exchange and Intercommunal Marriages in Izmir”
Coffee Break (11.00 – 11.30)
Part 2. (11.30 – 13.00)
Chair: Nazan Maksudyan (Fellow of EUME 2009/2010)
On Barak (Princeton University) – “When Voices Could Leave Bodies:
Egyptian Women, Telephones, and the Boundaries They Crossed”
Vahé Tachjian (ZfL Berlin) – “Mixed Marriage, Prostitution, Survival:
Reintegrating Armenian Women in Post-Ottoman Aleppo”
Lunch Break (13.00 – 14.30)
Session 3. Gendered Reinscription of the City: Women and Literature (14.30
– 16.30)
Chair: Kirsten Scheid (American University in Beirut; Fellow of EUME
2009/2010)
Haytham Bahoora (University of Colorado; Fellow of EUME 2009/2010) –
“Prostitution in Twentieth Century Iraqi Literature”
Christoph Herzog (Bamberg University) – “The Urban Experience in
Ottoman/Turkish Womens’ Memoirs”
Ottoman Urban History
27 - 28 May 2010, Berlin
Venue: Ballhaus Naunynstraße (Naunynstraße 27, 10997 Berlin)
Convened by Nazan Maksudyan (Fellow of EUME 2009/2010)
Regarding the traditional and well-established gendered participation
and representation in the public sphere, urban history, in parallel
with many other subfields of history, might tend to focus more on his
story rather than her stories. However, growing and expanding
scholarship on the history of women of the last few decades
demonstrated the importance of recognizing the agency of women, and
thus, the necessity of introducing their roles as relevant into the
larger picture. Historians started to acknowledge women as
manipulating, if not shaping, urban space. Women did more than react
to alterations in urban space: They actively participated in changing
the map of the city and in redefining its essence.
It is true that diverse groups of women approached the city from
different angles, with distinct intents, and with unequal pace. The
relationship between women and the public space was an intricate one,
defined along the lines of class, ethnic and religious identity, age,
and historical moment. Heterogeneous everyday experiences and domestic
spaces of women determined their relation to and presence in public
arenas. For that matter, women from different class, religious, ethnic
or immigrant backgrounds also had manifold linkages within themselves
and with the urban space. Furthermore, the city was more than its
economic and ethnic geography; urban sexual geography crosscut them,
in both ideological and physical terms. For instance, the presence of
elite women in working-class neighborhoods would be a breach of proper
sexual geography, since only working women and prostitutes (having a
thin line in-between) were allowed there. Thus, definitions of class,
gender, ethnicity, and sexuality were all intermixed in the urban
geography. However, women from diverse backgrounds succeeded in
challenging and negotiating the overimbued sexual division of urban
space. Both through rivalries and alliances amongst themselves, they
formed new urban relations and spaces and empowered themselves to have
a say in changing the urban structure regarding neighborhoods,
streets, schools, workplaces, legal regulations, and public spaces.
In that respect, the workshop attempts to reveal, recover and
reconsider the roles, positions, and actions of women in the midst of
altered, or redefined economic, social, political, and cultural
contexts of the late- and post-Ottoman cities. It reconsiders the
negotiations, alliances, and agency of women in asserting themselves
in the public domain, in which even today they are faced with
obstacles and resistance as legitimate actors. In cities, neither
designed for nor controlled by women, women had to reimagine and
reconceive the city before they would create female-controlled public
and semipublic spaces.
27 May, 20127 2010
Opening (10.00 – 11.00)
Ulrike Freitag (Director of the ZMO) – “Welcome”
Nazan Maksudyan (Fellow of EUME 2009/2010) – “Women in the City, the City
of Women”
Coffee Break (11.00 – 11.30)
Session 1. Women and the City: Reorganization of Urban Life Late Ottoman
Empire
Part 1. (11.30 – 13.00)
Chair: Dyala Hamzah (ZMO)
Iris Agmon (Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheva) – “Women in Late-Ottoman
Palestinian Cities and the Unresolved Question of Mute Historical Voices”
Ulrike Freitag (Director of the ZMO) – “Women in Late Ottoman Jeddah”
Nora Lafi (ZMO) - “Late Ottoman and Early Republican Visions of North
African Women: Between Ottomanity and a New Turkish Orientalism”
Lunch Break (13.00 – 14.30)
Part 2. (14.30 – 16.00)
Chair: Marc Baer (California, Irvine/ZMO)
Gülhan Balsoy (Isýk University, Istanbul) – “Gendering the Urban
Transformation in the Late Nineteenth Century Istanbul: The Case of Haseki
Women’s Hospital and Maternity Clinic (Viladethane)”
Nil Birol (Central European University, Budapest) – “'What is the
Imperial End to Us?': A Gendered Perspective from the Russian Tatar
Women to the
Ottoman Elite Women in 1910s Istanbul”
Keynote Speech (18.00 – 19.00)
Leyla NeyzLeyla Neyzi (Sabancý University, Istanbul) – “Tesvikiye: The
Making of an Elite Neighborhood and Narratives of Nostalgia in Istanbul”
Film-screening and discussion (19.00 – 20.00)
Remembering and Forgetting in the City: Finding Zabel Yesayan (directed by
Talin Suciyan & Lara Aharonian)
28 May, 2010
Session 2. Women in the City: Redefinition of Gender in Post-Ottoman
Cities
Part 1. (09.30 – 11.00)
Chair: Munir Fakher Eldin (Fellow of EUME 2009/2010)
Sevgi Adak (Leiden University, Amsterdam) – “Women and Unveiling in the
Post- Ottoman Public Sphere: Secularist Reforms and Women’s Agency in
Early Republican Turkey”
Ellinor Morack (FU Berlin) – “Challenging Established Concepts of Identity
and Belonging: Population Exchange and Intercommunal Marriages in Izmir”
Coffee Break (11.00 – 11.30)
Part 2. (11.30 – 13.00)
Chair: Nazan Maksudyan (Fellow of EUME 2009/2010)
On Barak (Princeton University) – “When Voices Could Leave Bodies:
Egyptian Women, Telephones, and the Boundaries They Crossed”
Vahé Tachjian (ZfL Berlin) – “Mixed Marriage, Prostitution, Survival:
Reintegrating Armenian Women in Post-Ottoman Aleppo”
Lunch Break (13.00 – 14.30)
Session 3. Gendered Reinscription of the City: Women and Literature (14.30
– 16.30)
Chair: Kirsten Scheid (American University in Beirut; Fellow of EUME
2009/2010)
Haytham Bahoora (University of Colorado; Fellow of EUME 2009/2010) –
“Prostitution in Twentieth Century Iraqi Literature”
Christoph Herzog (Bamberg University) – “The Urban Experience in
Ottoman/Turkish Womens’ Memoirs”