"Through the Looking Glass of the Local: Rereading Istanbul’s Heterogeneous Pasts"

This list is necessarily incomplete; indeed, its incompletion is perhaps its most suggestive characteristic. Our conference, “Through the Looking Glass of the Local: Rereading Istanbul’s Pasts through Its Myriad Spaces,” foregrounds the resolute heterogeneity of Istanbul by emphasizing the formative, perspectival relationship between historical narratives of the city and spaces and places within it. How do specific spaces and sites—buildings, monuments, streets, mahalles—encourage certain histories and memories while silencing others? Which chronotopes now dominate broad discourses about the city as a whole? And what counter-histories and heterotopias emerge from taking the differentiated space of the city seriously? At a time when Istanbul is uniquely targeted by both ideological and political economic powers seeking to extract surplus historical value from the city’s dense past, questions such as these are not only templates for scholarly endeavor, but sounding alarms urging attention.

For more details please contact cziesielsky(at)mmg.mpg.de.

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09:30-10:15 Welcome, opening remarks (Jeremy F. Walton, MPI-MMG)

10:15-10:30 Coffee Break

10:30-12:30 Panel One: Neo-Ottoman Echoes and Post-Ottoman Erasures

• Çiğdem Buğdaycı, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis:
  “The Dead Who is Alive: The Culture of Death in the Post-Ottoman Istanbul”
• Josh Carney, American University of Beirut:
  “Channeling the Ottoman Past: Popular Television and the Medium of Burial Sites in Neo-Ottoman Istanbul”
• Discussant: Piro Rexhepi (MPI-MMG)
  

12:30-13:30 Lunch for conference participants

13:30-15:30 Panel Two: Narrating Time and the City

• Timur Hammond, Syracuse University:
  “The Just Lived Past: Istanbul Through the Eyes of Süheyl Ünver and Ali Saim Ülgen”
• Suzan Meryem Rosita, European University Institute:
  “Survival, Speech and Silence: Trauma in Western Armenian Literature”
• Charles Sabatos, Yeditepe University:
  “Nostalgia for Istanbul/Constantinople in Interwar East Central Europe”
• Discussant: Miloš Jovanović (MPI-MMG)

15:30-17:00 Screening of the film “Skopje-Sarajevo-Salonika: A Post-Ottoman Trilogy” by Piro Rexhepi (MPI-MMG)

19:00 Dinner for conference participants

Day Two (Friday, September 29)

10:00-12:00 Keynote Lecture, Edhem Eldem, Boğaziçi University
“Istanbul: Heritage and Memory vs. Fabrication and Denial”

12:00-13:00 Lunch for conference participants

13:00-15:00 Panel Three: Locations of the Past

• Aynur de Rouen, State University of New York, Binghamton:
  “Community Resilience: Negotiating Space in Post-Ottoman Istanbul Neighbourhoods”
  
• Nagihan Haliloğlu, Ibn Haldun University:
  “Recasting Imperial Pasts and Palimpsest in Balat, Istanbul”
  
• Enno Maessen, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam School for Regional, Transnational and European Studies:
  “The City Isn’t What It Used to Be! Post-imperial Beyoğlu from the Perspective of Three Local Institutions”
  
• Discussant: Giulia Carabelli (MPI-MMG)

15:00-15:15 Coffee Break

15:15-16:00 Closing remarks and discussion

19:00 Dinner for conference participants