[Bilimsel Haber] CfP: Shared History, Shared Geography: The Ottoman East, April 18-19, 2013

[Gonul Pultar]

From: Ali Sipahi


CALL FOR PAPERS

Shared History, Shared Geography: The Ottoman East
Fourth Annual International Graduate Student Workshop
Armenian Studies Program
 
                                       April 18-19, 2013
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor


Deadline for submission of abstracts: December 15, 2012

Over the last three decades scholars of the Middle East have raised new
questions and used new methods that have forced them to reconsider
approaches of the former generations of scholarship.  These include, but
are not limited to, critical interrogations of modernization theory and
the provenance of the nation-state form. Accounts exclusively based on
Armenians, Kurds, Syrians, missionaries, etc. have emerged, while the
historiography of the Ottoman East has largely been concerned with
governmentality studies. Welcome as these changes may be, the respective
turns have had little impact on our study of the Ottoman Empire’s
eastern borderlands (defined roughly as the area bounded by Ankara,
Mosul, and Kars).

  The Ottoman East has been viewed largely, both by contemporary Ottoman
statesmen and modern-day historians, as a periphery of the Ottoman
enterprise centered in the imperial capital and western Anatolia. These
accounts posit the imperial center as the active agent of history,
seeking to civilize or bring order to its borderlands. This workshop
will begin to provincialize the center as it attempts to understand the
Ottoman East on its own terms.

  The Shared History, Shared Geography: The Ottoman East workshop is
organized by University of Michigan Graduate Students (Richard
Antaramian, Dzovinar Derderian, Ali Sipahi with faculty advisor Prof.
Kathryn Babayan) and seeks to bring together younger scholars (graduate
students engaged in research or those having defended their
dissertations in the last three years) studying the Ottoman East for the
period 1839-1950. Emphasizing an interdisciplinary and connected
approach, submissions should consider:

  ·         center-periphery relations/locality/provinciality: what did
the state mean in the Ottoman East?
·         tax collection and land issues
·         trans-imperial networks and agents
·         cosmopolitanism/parochialism
·         the circulation of people, money, ideas, and goods
·         cultural aspects (nomadic culture, provincial literature,
folklore, etc.)
·         inter-communal relations/sectarianism/ethnic divisions
·         social geography
·         gender and sexuality

  Successful applicants will need to submit a paper of no more than 20
double-spaced pages by March 1, 2013 to be circulated among workshop
participants.

  Please send an Abstract (250 words /single spaced) along with a CV to
theottomaneast at umich.edu by December 15, 2012.

  Some funds are available to cover travel expenses. Per donor 
guidelines, preference will be given to those traveling from the 
Republic of Armenia.


Armenian Studies Program
University of Michigan
1080 South University Ave., Suite 3633
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1106
USA