The Ottoman Erotic

Episode 289

with İrvin Cemil Schick

hosted by Susanna Ferguson and Matthew Ghazarian

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What terms and ideas were considered erotic in early modern Ottoman literature, and what can studying them tell us about later historical periods and our own conceptions of the beauty, love, and desire? In this episode, we welcome İrvin Cemil Schick back to the podcast to discuss a project he is compiling with İpek Hüner-Cora and Helga Anetshofer: a dictionary called the "Erotic Vocabulary of Ottoman Literature."

Release Date: 18 December 2016

This episode is part of a series entitled "Women, Gender, and Sex in the Ottoman World."

Stream via SoundCloud 

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Contributor Bios

	İrvin Cemil Schick holds a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has taught inter alia at Harvard University, MIT, and İstanbul Şehir University. He is the author of The Erotic Margin: Sexuality and Spatiality in Alteritist Discourse (1999), The Fair Circassian: Adventures of an Orientalist Motif (in Turkish, 2004), and Writing the Body, Society, and the Universe: On Islam, Gender, and Culture (in Turkish, 2011). His current research interests include the Islamic arts of the book; gender, sexuality, and the body in Islam; and animals and the environment in Islam.
	Susanna Ferguson is a Ph.D. Candidate in Middle Eastern History at Columbia University. She is currently working on a dissertation entitled "Tracing Tarbiya: Women, Gender and Childrearing in Egypt and Lebanon, 1865-1939."
	Matthew Ghazarian is a Ph.D. student in Columbia University's Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, African Studies. His research focuses on the intersections of sectarianism, humanitarianism, and political economy in central and eastern Anatolia between 1856 and 1893.

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Recommended Episodes

	Selim Kuru	#062 8/1/12	Sex, Love, and Worship in Classical Ottoman Texts
	Liat Kozma	#196 8/19/15	Sexology in Hebrew and Arabic
	Aurélie Perrier	#188 3/26/15	Illicit Sex in Ottoman and French Algeria

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CREDITS

Episode No. 289
Release Date: 18 December 2016
Recording Location: Istanbul
Editing and production by Chris Gratien
Sound excerpts: from archive.org - Baglamamin Dugumu - Necmiye Ararat and Muzaffer; Istanbul'dan Ayva Gelir Nar Gelir - Azize Tozem and Sari Recep; Harmandali - Recep Efendi, Cemal Efendi
Images and bibliography courtesy of İrvin Cemil Schick

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IMAGES

The images below are excerpted from a manuscript of Hamse-i Atâi from the Digital Walters collection.

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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Selections from the Ottoman translation of Rucû‘ü’ş-şeyh ilâ sabah. http://t24.com.tr/k24/yazi/rucu-secki,688

Anetshofer, Helga, İpek Hüner Cora, and İrvin Cemil Schick, “Cinsel İçerikli bir Osmanlı Kıyâfetnâmesi: Ta‘rîfnâme-i Zenâne,” Toplumsal Tarih 270 (June 2016), 28–37. 

Artan, Tülay and İrvin Cemil Schick, “Ottomanizing Pornotopia: Changing Visual Codes in Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Erotic Miniatures,” in Eros and Sexuality in Islamic Art, ed. Francesca Leoni and Mika Natif. (London: Ashgate, 2013), 157–207. 

Kuru, Selim S., “Sex in the Text: Deli Birader’s Dâfi‘ü ’l-gumûm ve Râfi‘ü ’l-humûm and the Ottoman Literary Canon,” Middle Eastern Literatures, 10, 2 (August 2007), 157–174. 

Kuru, Selim S., “Biçimin Kıskacında bir ‘Tarih-i Nev-İcad’: Enderunlu Fazıl Bey ve Defter-i Aşk Adlı Mesnevisi,” in Şinasi Tekin’in Anısına: Uygurlardan Osmanlıya, ed. Günay Kut and Fatma Büyükkarcı Yılmaz (İstanbul: Simurg, 2005), 476–506.

Najmabadi, Afsaneh, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).

Schick, İrvin Cemil, “Representation of Gender and Sexuality in Ottoman and Turkish Erotic Literature,” Turkish Studies Association Journal 28, 1–2 (2004 [2008]), 81–103. 

Ze’evi, Dror, Producing Desire: Changing Sexual Discourse in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500-1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).