Women, Gender, and Sex in the Ottoman World

with Susanna Ferguson hosted by Chris Gratien | What does the history of modern Arab political thought look like from the perspective of women authors? In this podcast, we sit down with longtime Ottoman History Podcast contributor Susanna Ferguson to explore this question, which animates her new book Labors of Love: Gender, Capitalism, and Democracy in Modern Arab Thought. Previous scholarship has focused on the role of women in discussing the roles of women, but as Prof. Ferguson argues, women writers of the 19th and 20th century can also be studied as producers of social theory and commentators on the important matters of their era. In our conversation, we use the lens of public discourse about child-rearing or tarbiyah as a window onto ideas about a wide range of topics, including morality, labor, and democratic governance. In doing so, we consider the importance of seeing the Arab world as a source of portable ideas about modern society, as opposed to a merely passive recipient of Western modernity.    « Click for More »

with Nevila Pahumi hosted by Susanna Ferguson | In 1919, Paraskevi Kyrias went to Paris to advocate for Albanian independence. As a woman in the overwhelmingly masculine space of international diplomacy, she faced sexism and unwanted romantic overtures. Nevertheless, she called on her connections within a global Protestant community, her life in diaspora in the United States, and her experiences at the elite Constantinople Girls' School to play a unique role in the Albanian campaign for independence after World War I. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Nevila Pahumi about Kyrias' story, her leadership of the early Albanian women's movement, and the diary of her experiences in Paris she left behind. We also trace the history of this remarkable woman after 1919, as she and her family were repudiated by a secularizing Albanian state determined to exise Protestant activism from their national history -- until she was once again remade as a feminist icon in the last years of her life. « Click for More »

Episode 448 with Burcu Karahan hosted by Suzie Ferguson Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud "One Thousand Kisses," "Plate of Cream," "Story of a Lily:" these are some of the provocative titles that graced the covers of Ottoman erotic novels in the early decades of the twentieth century. While erotic fiction and poetry had a long history in Ottoman and Arabic manuscript culture, the erotic novels of the second constitutional period (1908-1914), some creatively adapted from French originals, emerged in a period of unprecedented freedom for writers. Yet the novels themselves were often less explicit and transgressive than their their titles might suggest. In this episode, Burcu Karahan shows how, in late Ottoman fiction, stories about sex and desire celebrated not only sexual freedom, but also conservative fantasies about male sexual power and the power of heterosexual love. « Click for More »

Bölüm 437 Leyla Kayhan Elbirlik Sunucu Can Gümüş Podcast'i indir Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud Osmanlı'da çiftler nasıl evlenir, nasıl boşanırdı? Bu podcast'te Leyla Kayhan Elbirlik ile İstanbul Bab, Davud Paşa ve Ahi Çelebi mahkemelerinin 1755-1840 yıllarındaki kayıtlarını inceleyerek tamamladığı doktora araştırması odağında, Osmanlı İstanbul'unda evlilik ve boşanma davaları üzerine sohbet ediyoruz. Elbirlik'in araştırması, kadınların evlilik, boşanma ve mülkiyetle ilişkili konularda mahkemeleri aktif olarak kullandıklarını gösterirken, Osmanlı ailesinde ve toplumunda kadının rolüne dair yaygın kanıları da yeniden değerlendiriyor. « Click for More »

Episode 421 with Gülhan Balsoy and Tuba Demirci hosted by Suzie Ferguson Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud How did the experience of pregnancy and childbirth change in the Ottoman Empire in the context of nineteenth-century reforms? In this episode, we discuss how the question of managing a "population" become a key concern for the Ottoman state, bringing new opportunities and difficulties for Ottoman mothers and midwives alike. Questions about childbirth also became enmeshed in late-imperial demographic and cultural anxieties about the relationship between the Empire and its non-Muslim populations. As pregnancy and childbirth drew the attention of medical men, state bureaucrats, and men and women writers in the emerging periodical press, new technologies, regulations, and forms of medical knowledge changed what it meant to give birth and raise a child. « Click for More »

Episode 419 with İpek Hüner Cora hosted by Işın Taylan Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud Ottoman literature is heavily associated with verse, namely, Ottoman court poetry, and to some extent, folk literature. Ottoman stories, however, remain unexplored, even though they circulated in the empire and entertained many. For us, today, they are an invaluable source to study daily life, gender and space in the early modern Ottoman world. What is an Ottoman story? What do Ottoman stories tell us? In this episode, İpek Hüner Cora joins the podcast to talk about fictional prose stories in the Ottoman Empire and we discuss the gendered and spatial aspects of stories scattered in manuscript collections. « Click for More »

Bölüm 384 Muzaffer Özgüleş Sunucu: Can Gümüş Podcast'i indir Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud Toplumsal cinsiyet bakış açısının son birkaç on yılda Osmanlı tarih yazımına yaptığı müdahaleler, saray kadınlarının imar faaliyetlerinde üstlendiği rolün giderek daha çok araştırılmasına da vesile oldu. Muzaffer Özgüleş’i konuk ettiğimiz bu bölümde, Sultan IV. Mehmed’in hasekisi, Sultan II. Mustafa ve Sultan III. Ahmed’in validesi Gülnuş Emetullah Sultan’ın imar faaliyetlerini detaylandırırken kadın baniler odağında kent, mimarlık üretimi ve toplumsal cinsiyet ilişkisini değerlendiriyoruz. « Click for More »

Episode 378 with Özlem Gülin Dağoğlu hosted by Sam Dolbee and Shireen Hamza Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud Many myths have accompanied the life of Mihri Rasim, but few are as interesting as her life itself. Born to a wealthy family in Istanbul in the late Ottoman period, Mihri Rasim became a politically connected painter, living in Italy for several years on her own and then Paris, where she played a key role in the salons of Ottoman dissidents known as the Young Turks. In the wake of the 1908 Constitutional Revolution, she returned to Istanbul, and opened the Fine Arts School for Women in Istanbul, where she went on to teach. After the war, she went to Italy, and then the United States, where she continued her work painting and teaching. In addition to many self-portraits, she also painted various powerful figures, among them Mustafa Kemal, Mussolini, and Thomas Edison. Listen for a discussion of art, gender, and migration in a period of momentous political change. « Click for More »

Episode 369 with Jane Hathaway hosted by Sanja Kadrić and Emily Neumeier Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud For more than three centuries, a cadre of African eunuchs were responsible for guarding the Ottoman harem at the imperial palace in Istanbul. The head of this group, the Chief Harem Eunuch, emerged as an extremely influential individual at the court. This was especially true during the crisis years of the long seventeenth century, when the palace became divided along ever-shifting lines of political factions. In this episode, we trace the long trajectory of the office of Chief Harem Eunuch, from its establishment—coinciding with the sultan’s decision to begin residing full-time in the harem—until the ultimate demise of the empire. In particular, we highlight the high degree of mobility for these eunuchs, beginning with their initial journey from Ethiopia to the shores of the Bosphorus, and later on using their position to maintain strong ties to Cairo as well as the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina. A liminal figure in every sense of the word—in terms of gender, race, and his duties at the court—the Chief Harem Eunuch offers unique insights into the nature of political life at the Ottoman palace. « Click for More »

Episode 357 with Didem Havlioğlu hosted by Chris Gratien Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud What did it mean to be a woman in the intellectual world of early modern Islamic empires? In this episode, our guest Didem Havlioğlu offers one answer to this question through the life and works of Mihrî Hatun, an Ottoman woman from 15th-century Amasya whose poetry survives to this day. Mihrî was unique within the male-dominated sphere of early modern love poetry, and as we discuss in this podcast, her position as a woman was integral to her poetry and its meaning. These poems and the relationships of this exceptional writer are the subject of Havlioğlu's new book entitled Mihrî Hatun: Performance, Gender-Bending, and Subversion in Ottoman Intellectual History (Syracuse University Press). « Click for More »

Episode 350 with Hanan Hammad hosted by Susanna Ferguson and Seçil Yilmaz Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud In this episode, we discuss the emergence of new masculinities, femininities, and visions of "good sex" in Egypt's al-Mahalla al-Kubra, a city in the Nile Delta that became one of the main centers of industrial production and manufacturing in the early twentieth century. How did men and women who came to al-Mahalla to work in the factory, run boardinghouses, and perform other forms of labor negotiate the coercive hierarchies of industrial capitalism in their daily and intimate lives? What can we learn about modes of existence and resistance from considering their experiences, and how do the stories of working-class men and women challenge or nuance the more well-known accounts of gender and family in Egypt that have been based on the middle-class press? « Click for More »

Episode 340 with Leslie Peirce hosted by Suzie Ferguson and Seçil Yılmaz Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud In this episode, we explore the life and times of Roxelana, also known as Hürrem Sultan, a slave girl who became chief consort and then legal wife of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman I (r. 1520-1566). We trace Roxelana's probable beginnings and the possible paths that took her to Istanbul, asking how she rose above her peers in the Old Palace to become a favored concubine and then the wife of the Sultan. We explore her relationship to other women at the Ottoman court, the politics of her motherhood and philanthropy, and her role in Ottoman diplomacy. In the end, Roxelana's work, her relationship with Suleiman, and the unusual nuclear family they created despite the otherwise polygynous patterns of reproduction at the Ottoman court would transform the rules of Ottoman succession, the role of Ottoman royal women, and the future of the Empire as a whole. The life story of this one remarkable woman sheds light on many facets of the history of the Ottoman Empire, showing how a single individual's story can serve as a lynchpin for grasping the complexities of an age. « Click for More »

Episode 296 with Sarah Ghabrial hosted by Edna Bonhomme and Sam Dolbee Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud In French Algeria, the colonial imperatives of assimilation and difference gave birth to legal pluralism. In this episode, Dr. Sarah Ghabrial explains what it meant for Algerian women to have different legal structures operating at the same time. The ability to argue one's case in an Islamic court and also appeal it in French common law provided openings for women in matters of personal status. But it also had limits. They may have ultimately been able to divorce their husbands, but divorcing themselves from patriarchal structures of power proved more difficult, if not impossible. At the same time as legal codes changed, so, too, did medicine. As in much of the world, a state-sponsored scientific medicine, mostly practiced by men, began to crowd out local healing practices and knowledge of bodies, in many cases performed and possessed by women such as midwives. But it would have a particularly racialized impact in French Algeria. We also examine the impact of this change in court, where the latter form of medicine came to be an arbiter of truth, particularly in divorce cases. We close by shifting from matters of impotence to questions of agency, and how useful of a concept it is for this history. « Click for More »

Episode 289 with İrvin Cemil Schick hosted by Susanna Ferguson and Matthew Ghazarian Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud What terms and ideas were considered erotic in early modern Ottoman literature, and what can studying them tell us about later historical periods and our own conceptions of the beauty, love, and desire? In this episode, we welcome İrvin Cemil Schick back to the podcast to discuss a project he is compiling with İpek Hüner-Cora and Helga Anetshofer: a dictionary called the "Erotic Vocabulary of Ottoman Literature." Release Date: 18 December 2016 « Click for More »

with Liat Kozmahosted by Chris Gratien and Susanna Ferguson Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud With political and economic developments in 19th century Egypt, the lives of women began to change in dramatic ways. From the rise of wage labor and the restructuring of rural households to the emergence of women's movements and publications, pre-colonial Egypt witnessed numerous transformation in the realm of gender. In this episode, Liat Kozma shares her research regarding some of the most marginalized women in Egyptian society during this period of change. Manumitted slaves, doctors and midwives, factory employees, and sex workers were some groups of women who left many historical traces in the police, court, and medical records of the Khedival government. « Click for More »

with Ellen Fleischmann & Christine Lindner hosted by Susanna Ferguson This episode is part of a series entitled Women, Gender, and Sex in the Ottoman World Download the seriesPodcast Feed | iTunes | Hipcast | Soundcloud In this episode, Ellen Fleischmann and Christine Lindner discuss the history of women and gender and the American Protestant Mission in Lebanon. How did American missionary women experience and transform the American Protestant project in the Levant in the 19th and 20th centuries? How did American missionaries, both women and men, interact with women from Beirut and Mt. Lebanon, both those who converted and those who did not? And how did these heterogeneous interactions produce new experiences of womanhood, family, power, and authority in the Levant? Drs. Fleischmann and Lindner reflect on these questions based on their considerable research in Lebanon and elsewhere, and also share their thoughts about sources and strategies for tracing women's history and missionary history in the Ottoman and post-Ottoman Levant. « Click for More »

with Akram Khater hosted by Graham Pitts . Scholars have long neglected the Middle East’s Christian communities in general and Christian women in particular. In this episode, Akram Khater draws attention to the biography of Hindiyya al-'Ujaimi (1720-1798) to explore the religious and political upheavals of 18th-century Aleppo and Mount Lebanon. Hindiyya’s story speaks to the dynamic history of the Maronite Church, the fraught encounter between Arab and European Christianities, and the role of faith as a historical force. For half a century, she held as much sway over the Maronite Church as any other cleric. The extent of her influence won her powerful enemies in Lebanon and the Vatican. Hindiyya weathered one inquisition but was eventually convicted of heresy and confined to a solitary cell for the final decade of her life. The story of her ascent and demise illuminates gendered aspects of piety and politics in the Christian Middle East. Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | Soundcloud Scholars have long neglected the Middle East’s Christian communities in general and Christian women in particular. In this episode, Akram Khater draws attention to the biography of Hindiyya al-'Ujaimi (1720-1798) to explore the religious and political upheavals of 18th-century Aleppo and Mount Lebanon. Hindiyya’s story speaks to the dynamic history of the Maronite Church, the  fraught encounter between Arab and European Christianities, and the role of faith as a historical force. For half a century, she held as much sway over the Maronite Church as any other cleric. The extent of her influence won her powerful enemies in Lebanon and the Vatican. Hindiyya weathered one inquisition but was eventually convicted of heresy and confined to a solitary cell for the final decade of her life. The story of her ascent and demise illuminates gendered aspects of piety and politics in the Christian Middle East. « Click for More »

with Sylvia Wing Önder hosted by Chris Gratien and Seçil Yılmaz Download the episode Podcast Feed | iTunes | Soundcloud The subject of health in the modern period is often discussed as a transition from traditional to scientific medicine and what Foucault has called "the birth of the clinic." Such perspectives view medicine and healing through the lens of changing methods, forms of knowledge, and types of authority. In this podcast, our guest Sylvia Wing Önder offers a slightly different approach to the subject in a discussion of her monograph "We Have No Microbes Here (Carolina Academic Press, 2007)," looking at continuities in the centrality of households and women in making decisions about medical care within a Black Sea village. « Click for More »

Zeynep Kutluata Seçil Yılmaz ile Chris Gratien'in sunuculuklarıyla Bölümü dinle Podcast Feed | iTunes | SoundCloud Osmanlı tarihinde, tıpkı dünya tarihinde olduğu gibi, büyük toplumsal dönüşümlere, devrimlere, savaşlara ve barışlara dair anlatılara erkeklerin eylemleri, sesleri ve kalemleri egemen olurken, kadınlar ve çocuklar sıklıkla bu anlatıların ya dışında bırakıldı yada yardımcı öğesi olageldi. Sosyal ve feminist tarih yazımının en önemli katkısı kadın anlatılarını merkez alarak ve görünür kılarak Osmanlı toplumunda toplumsal cinsiyet rolleri, vatandaşlık hakları ve emek ilişkilerini yeni bir tarih anlayışı ve Osmanlı tarihi anlatısı sunmak oldu. Zeynep Kutluata ile bu bölümde Osmanlı’nın savaşlara ve göçlere karışmış ‘’en uzun yüzyılı’’nda kadınların gerek savaş alanlarında gerekse cephe gerisinde aldıkları aktif siyasi ve toplumsal rolleri vatandaşlık ve toplumsal cinsiyet tartışmaları ekseninde ele aldık. « Click for More »

with Nazan Maksudyan hosted by Susanna Ferguson Download the episode Podcast Feed | iTunes | Soundcloud In the 1920s and 1930s, politicians, intellectuals, and members of the public joined a lively debate about the issue of female suicide in Turkey. While we cannot know whether the rates of female suicide were actually skyrocketing during this period, the fact that so many public figures began to treat this issue as a central concern tells us a lot about the relationship between the modernizing state of Early Republican Turkey and the women whom it governed. In this episode, Nazan Maksudyan explores what might have provoked this debate, what it might say about the state and its relationship to women, gender, and the female body, and how women themselves might have used suicide as a means of asserting their agency. « Click for More »