[1] Ottoman Cultural Mobilities: 19th Century Modes of Travel, Collecting and Display

From: Semra Horuz
Date: Oct 4, 2019

Call for papers:
Special Session (S-CUL-3): “Ottoman Cultural Mobilities: 19th Century Modes of Travel, Collecting and Display”.

Co-organizer(s): Belgin Turan Ozkaya, Middle East Technical University; Semra Horuz, TU Wien - Istanbul Bilgi University

Keywords: 19th century Ottoman Empire, Tanzimat, Ottoman Travel Cultures, Museology in the Ottoman Empire, Collecting and displaying in the late Ottoman Empire

Short abstract:
Stressing the contextual and conceptual aspects, this session aims to discuss the Ottoman participation and response to the international 19th century culture of travel, collecting and display. It particularly focuses on the mobility and circulation of people and objects around Ottoman and connected contexts; Ottoman encounters and exchanges en route; the journeys of intellectuals, collections and archives in the late Ottoman Empire.

Session content:
From the 18th century onwards, the Ottoman state instigated major transformations after overtly facing the fact that the imperial glory of the past could not be restored solely with military reformations. Throughout the 19th century, technological developments and intellectuals’ awareness of social transformations incited unprecedented cultural mobilities. The vibrant modes of Tanzimat reforms ushered in an impetus to understand Europe systematically on both governmental and public levels. Forged by the ever-changing transportation infrastructures, vital urban milieu and novel understanding of history, Ottoman intelligentsia embarked on solo journeys, pored over European cities, published accounts, created, displayed and circulated personal archives and collections. Concurrently, vocal press culture became an essential engine of knowledge production and discussion on grand concepts such as progress and heritage, tradition and civilization. All these practices were pivotal for the formation of spaces that frame and exhibit the past effective in the emergence of the modern museum and the conception of the fields like urban planning, architecture and archeology.

Stressing the contextual and conceptual aspects of these activities and formations, this session welcomes researches on Ottoman participation and responses to the international 19th century culture of travel, collecting and display. It particularly focuses on the mobility and circulation of people and objects around Ottoman and connected contexts; Ottoman encounters and exchanges en route; the journeys of intellectuals, collections and archives in the late Ottoman Empire. In addition to the bureaucratic attempts and initiatives of the capital, personal imageries, reception and appropriation of various localities, stories of archeological and architectural pieces as well as those of non-professionals, interactions between locals, foreigners, dilettanti and experts are some of the tracks that might be explored.

In the scholarship there is a clear subordination of 19th century Ottoman cultural mobilities to the bureaucratic transformations and diplomatic concerns. The aim here is not to disregard such interconnectedness and the dependence of cultural policies to political missions but pay attention also to the movements of artefacts and people. Rejecting essentializing oppositional constructions of the East and West but also chauvinistic counter arguments that lose sight of the obvious asymmetrical relations, failures and constraints, the purpose is to discuss ways for analyzing 19th century Ottoman transformations via a transnational paradigm.

Proposals can only be submitted online via the EAUH2020 website till 27 October 2019: https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/conferences/eauh2020/

Acceptance of proposals will be communicated to lead proposers on 1 December 2019.

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[2] Streets as Arteries of the City: Resilience of an Urban Element

From: Rainer Schützeichel
Date: Oct 3, 2019

Streets as Arteries of the City: Resilience of an Urban Element
EAUH 2020 Conference, S-TRA-4

Streets rank amongst the most persistent structures of cities. They can be regarded as their arteries containing and sustaining urban life. Their patterns play an essential role in defining a city’s ‘footprint’, making history visible in the urban fabric.

Thanks to their communicating function, streets are one of the most important urban elements. Even more than the built fabric, the course, axes, and grids defined by them above ground on the one hand remain persistent out of habit or, more materialistic, because of the infrastructures installed underground. One can think of high streets that derived from ancient trade roads or markets, rural pathways that had been perpetuated in the course of 19th century city extensions, or – as the probably most prominent example – the old Indian footpath that was to become Manhattan’s Broadway. On the other hand, street patterns define the ‘footprint’ or image of a city. Again, New York comes to mind with its typical grid, as well as the grand axes cut into the old fabric of Paris under Napoléon III or the enclosing gesture of the Ringstraße in Vienna.

In many ways, streets can be read as arteries of the city. They provide it with light, air, and energy, and they allow its users to move from one quarter to the other, to travel, to commemorate historic events in public spaces or to gather spontaneously for celebration, protest or revolt. It is this mixture of habit, historic value and material conditions that explains why streets in most cases persist even when the built structures that flank them are destroyed by catastrophe or military event – after the rubble is cleared, the street pattern with its underground installations provides something like a plumb-line for the city’s reconstruction. Only few examples (e. g. Lisbon, Glarus) can be found in the history of cities in which these formative elements were neglected.

The session aims at discussing the aspect of the streets’ resilience, be it as remnants of older structures, as providers of material supply and energy or as stages for urban life. Against the background of current problems closely linked to the question of sustainability, namely suburbanization on the one hand, and urban densification on the other, the organizers want to stimulate a discussion about the meaning of city streets for urban development in the past 150 years.

We invite scholars to hand in their proposal via the website of EAUH for our Specialist Session (please refer to session S-TRA-4): https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/conferences/eauh2020/papers/call-for-papers/.

Session Organizers:
Dr. Rainer Schützeichel, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich
Prof. Dr. Harald R. Stühlinger, Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz