Call for Paper : « Historical Continuities, Political Responsibilities: Unsettling Conceptual Blind-Spots in Ottoman and Turkish Studies », Graduate Student Conference, May 4-5, 2007, New York University and The Graduate Center, CUNY.

As the historiography of the Ottoman Empire is still mostly excluded from the history of Europe, or only addressed as one of a formative 'other', this conference wants to bring into dialogue graduate students who are faced with the particular fall-outs of Ottoman historiography with regard to Turkey and the Middle East as well as the Balkans and Eastern Europe, where scholarship has predominantly focused on issues of post-socialism and Europeanization. Historically and conceptually rooted in the discipline of orientalist studies, much of the scholarship on regions formerly subsumed under different forms of Ottoman governance, be they in Europe or the Middle East, draws on a body of work that Talal Asad an Roger Owen aptly described to have sought to understand "non-European rule" "by looking for absent kinds of concepts 'liberty', 'progress', 'humanism' which are supposed to be distinctive of Western civilization" (1980, 35). More than 26 years later, the engagements with Edward Said's critique of Orientalism notwithstanding, this perspective has perpetuated a set of standardized narratives, such as the notion of "belated modernity", which has become an explanatory model for almost all political, economic and social problems throughout the Balkans, Turkey and the Middle East.

Through a rigorous discussion of the most prominent and central arguments on the transition from empires to nation-states, this workshop aims to break away from evaluations of the Ottoman Empire as well as the historical trajectory of its successor states that continue to operate along well-criticized dichotomous notions such as "tradition and modernity",  "religious and secular", "East and West". These concepts are employed in official state-narratives and academic discourses alike, although with often diametrically opposed intentions. This workshop is particularly intended to problematize the political and academic implications that this parallelism produces in regard to understanding the history of the Ottoman Empire as well as that of its former territories. We invite participants to critically examine how these concepts have been, and are, operationalized in both theory and practice when it comes to issues such  as "nationalism", "citizenship", "multiculturalism", "ethnic conflict", "identity", "secularism", "democratization", "state sovereignty" and the like.

Although sessions will be organized around the themes of submitted papers, one major emphasis will be on present-day Turkey. Here, we are particularly concerned with the many blind-spots that the conceptual framework of Ottoman and Turkish studies has created and perpetuated, among them the myth of radical rupture between the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, the obscuration of the religious, ethnic and linguistic diversity of Anatolia through "retrospective Turkification", and the silences surrounding different forms of state violence -- such as the history of military coups, the Armenian genocide, the internal displacement of Kurds, and other measures of "population engineering". This workshop also seeks to question the ways in which critical approaches in the social sciences have recently attempted to change the public perception of Turkey's official historiography, while at the same time staying circumscribed by the very conceptual framework of the standardized narratives they seek to subvert.

For this interdisciplinary workshop, we invite contributions from graduate students in the social sciences and humanities whose work grapples with the above outlined conceptual limitations and blind-spots permeating the majority of Ottoman and Turkish Studies as well as related fields. Proposals need not necessarily be limited to present-day Turkey, and we look forward to submissions covering former Ottoman Empire territories. Finally, we encourage proposals that not only aim to advance alternative theoretical approaches, for instance, by employing a comparative framework, but that are also sensitive to the political implications and responsibilities of academic works in this area.

Abstracts should be between 200-300 words and are due on March 18, 2007.

Applicants will be notified within one week after the deadline. The workshop will take place from May 4-5, 2007 at New York University and the Graduate Center, CUNY.

Please also provide a brief biography (200 word max), including current academic affiliation and research interests.

This initial workshop is conceptualized as an exploratory discussion ground for a publication and an accompanying conference planned for early 2008.

Abstracts and inquiries should be addressed to

<unsettling.blindspots@gmail.com>.

This Graduate Student Conference is sponsored by:

The Center for International History at Columbia University

Department of Anthropology, Graduate Center (CUNY)

The Doctoral Student Council (DCS), Graduate Center (CUNY)

The Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center (MEMEAC),

Graduate Center (CUNY)

The Provost~Rs Office Professional Development Fund, Graduate Center

(CUNY)

Wilf Department of Politics, MA Program; New York University

Organizers:

*Ozan Aksoy, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Music(Graduate Center,

CUNY, New York)

*Arman Artug, Managing Editor, Hye Tert News Portal

*Bedross Der Matossian, Ph.D. Candidate, Department for Middle East

and Asian Languages and Cultures (Columbia University, New York)

*Ayda Erbal, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Politics (New York

University, New York)

*Banu Karaca, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Cultural Anthropology

(Graduate Center, CUNY, New York)

*Ceren Özgül, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Cultural Anthropology

(Graduate Center, CUNY, New York).