9/25: The Near East and Beyond: New Discoveries and Approaches with Nathan Young

Theorizing Contemporary Turkey with Village-Life Nostalgia

by NELC Doctoral Candidate – Nathan Young

Tuesday, September 25, 2018 – 4:00pm
Hagerty 306

(c) NELC OSU

Turkey is often understood according to state-sponsored narratives of development, urbanization and secularization. However, persistent affinities forsmall-scale lifeways challenge the primacy and affective range of these “official” discourses. Instances of village-life nostalgia present in the Turkish imaginary thus provide analytical depth regarding a variety of social and cultural phenomena, including the failures of “modernity.” Based on recent ethnographic fieldwork, this presentation uses nostalgia as a theoretical lens for thinking about contemporary Turkey.

https://nelc.osu.edu/events/theorizing-contemporary-turkey-village-life-nostalgia

 

9/27: Turkish Film Classics Screening “Fetih 1453”

Turkish Film Classics

Thursday September 27, 5:00

Room 165, Thompson Library

(picture with courtesy from the OSU Libraries’ Middle East Center)

The OSU Libraries’ Middle East section and the Turkish Studies Working Group will present Faruk Aksoy’s  Turkish epic, Fetih 1453, about the Ottoman  Conquest of Constantinople.   This big budget ($17M), three hour film, was important with respect to the growing Turkish Film industry as well as its historical importance  both as history and as an expression of modern Turkish identity.  Due to its length, we will start this film earlier than usual at 5:15 with a brief introduction at 5:00.    Refreshments will be provided by the Middle East Studies Center and the Turkish Working Group.

In 1453, the Byzantine capital of Constantinople is surrounded by Ottoman Turks. The city is but a shadow of its former glory due to the empire’s ever receding coffers, while the Ottoman Empire continues to grow rich. After years of tolerating the existence of Byzantium, the ambitious sultan, Mehmet II launches his campaign to end the Byzantine Empire and take Constantinople for the Ottomans, resulting in arguably the greatest siege of that age.