This conference aims to examine and problematize the use of visual sources of late Ottoman history in an interdisciplinary context. As images become more and more accessible, they are integrated in myriad ways into writing history–political, cultural, social, environmental, urban, art, architectural, and even economic. If they constitute primary documents for art and architectural historians, they enhance textual primary documents in other areas by giving them visual representation. However, the dialogue between disciplines provokes serious methodological issues, ranging from excessive interpretation based solely on a single visual document (typically in art history) to the reduction of images as light distraction (as observed in social and political history).
The goal of our conference is to identify and discuss key methodological issues in the use of visual documents in an interdisciplinary manner, drawing from new research.
9:00-9:15 Opening Remarks, Zeynep Celik (Columbia University/NJIT)
9:15-10:30 Panel 1: The Military
Chair: Rashid Khalidi, Columbia University
Burçin Çakir (Glasgow Caledonian University)-“Holy War made in the Ottoman Empire (?)”: Visual War Propaganda and Religion, the War Journal (Harp Mecmuası), 1915-1918
Michael Talbot (University of Greenwich)-“And the military band spread joy through their music”: A photographic microhistory of a late-Ottoman Jerusalemite crowd
10:30-10:45 Coffee Break
10:45-12:30 Panel 2: Postcards, Cartoons, and Films
Chair: Salim Tamari, Georgetown University
Mehmet Kentel (Koç University) Drawing ‘cosmopolitan’ Pera: Artist and networks of power in the late nineteenth century Istanbul
Ibrahim Cansızoğlu (Koç University)- Postcards of Handan Rusti
Özde Çeliktemel-Thomen (University College London) – Filmic evidence in the writing of history
12:30-13:30 Lunch
13:30-15:15 Panel 3: The Body
Chair: Nükhet Varlık, Rutgers University
Burçak Özludil Altin (New Jersey Institute of Technology) – Psychiatry, Space and Time: the case of an Ottoman Asylum
Murat Yıldız (Skidmore College)- Re-constructing “the Mecca for sportsmen”: Union Club in Late Ottoman Istanbul
Seçil Yılmaz (Cornell University)- Depicting the Body in the Late Ottoman Empire: A Medical Perspective for Visual Sources
15:15- 15:30 Coffee Break
15:30-16:45 Panel 4: The Past
Chair: Zainab Bahrani, Columbia University
Zeinab Azarbadegan (Columbia University)- Imagined geographies, re-invented histories: Ottoman Iraq in Iranian textual and visual sources
Dotan Halevy (Columbia University)- The Capture of Ottoman Ruins: How Visualization Antiquates the Ottoman Landscape
16:45-17:00 Coffee Break
17:00-18:45 Synthesis Panel
18:45-20:45 Dinner at Faculty House
