2025 - Ottoman Mobilities: Things and Subjectivities in the Global Nineteenth Century, Ayşe Belgin Özkaya
Ottoman Mobilities: Things and Subjectivities in the Global Nineteenth Century is an Edited Volume co-edited by Ayşe Belgin Özkaya and Sibel Zandi-Sayek.
This volume offers a broad panorama of the late Ottoman world as it was shaped and moulded by various forms of mobilities during the nineteenth century—a period characterised by expanded geographies and increased cultural exchange. It exposes the desires and initiatives of mobile Ottoman actors while showcasing the agency of itinerant objects as catalysts of cultural production.
The chapters explore granular stories from a formative period before the rise of mass tourism and mass media. They trace the individual trajectories taken by civilians and diplomats, bankers and brokers, curators and collectors, artists and literati, as well as objects, artworks, antiquities, and images, revealing the multivalent and shifting agency of peoples and objects.
Specifically, the volume tracks the Tour d’Europe of junior bureaucrats; the transnational activities of learned societies; the artistic and photographic output of mobile agents; the Ottoman commodities sent to the World’s Fairs; and the itinerant artefacts amassed in fledgling public museums and private collections. In so doing, it also sheds light on the founding period of various modern disciplines and expertises like archaeology, Islamic art, engineering, and photography.
Ayşe Belgin Özkaya is Professor in the Faculty of Architecture, Middle East Technical University. Her work tackles intertwined histories of nineteenth and twentieth-century architectures.
