The MESA 2010 program includes 228 sessions that are scheduled in 12 panel time slots, beginning Thursday, November 18 at 5:00pm and ending on Sunday, November 21 at 3:30pm. The Presidential Address and Awards Ceremony will be held Friday, November 19 beginning at 7:00pm. The online, searchable program is always the most up-to-date and reflects changes to the program as they are made in the system. The preliminary program documents below are static documents that reflect the program/meeting as of July 29, 2010. The final printed program and addendum will be circulated at the meeting.
To Search the Program, Click on the Link:
http://mymesa.arizona.edu/meeting_program.php
Here are Some Programs of Interest:
New Trends in Scholarship on Arabs and the Ottoman Empire: Eugene Rogan’s “The Arabs” and Jane Hathaway’s “The Arab Lands Under Ottoman Rule”
Friday, 11/19/10 04:30pm
For a long period of time, scholarship that was focused on the history of the Arab lands either ignored the Ottoman Empire or minimized its importance. Conversely, very few of the studies that focused on the Ottoman Empire have paid the Arab lands the attention they deserve. Historical, cultural, and linguistic factors have combined to form a barrier that has proven to be very hard to cross. Fortunately, in recent years, we are seeing a growing number of studies that are crossing this divide. In addition to the place of the Arab lands within the organization and functioning of the empire, these studies also examine the nature and consequences of the imperial rule which the Ottoman center exercised over the Arab lands.
Themes in the Cultural and Intellectual History of the Ottoman Arab Provinces
Thursday, 11/18/10 05:00pm
The intellectual life of the Arab-Islamic world between the 15th and 19th centuries remains a neglected field of study, largely because of the widespread assumption that Arab-Islamic culture entered a long period of stagnation after the 13th century. According to this narrative, it was only with European military and economic expansion in the 19th century that the Arab-Islamic world “awoke” from its intellectual torpor. In the last two decades scholars have challenged this narrative, and the present panel aims to contribute to the debate by exploring a range of topics. Proceeding in rough chronological order, the first paper examines the holy cities of the Hijaz as a major center of Muslim intellectual and cultural production in the 17th century, drawing and re-exporting pilgrims, students, and Sufi adepts from throughout Afro-Eurasia. It focuses on a group of prominent scholars and highlights their controversial approaches to Islamic mysticism, their possible role as antecedents to 18th-century religious reform, and the geographical orientation of their wide-flung social networks. Set in Syria, the second paper considers evolutions in the concept of justice in the 17th and 18th centuries. It argues that a set of treatises critical of Ottoman resettlement policies marked a change in scholarly expectations of good governance, and it links them to the broader process of political decentralization taking place throughout the Arab provinces at the time. Turning from intellectual production to consumption, the third paper examines change and continuity in the library holdings of an urban notable family in Aleppo from the 17th to the 18th century. It assesses the influence on the library of contemporaneous intellectual and religious developments, among them the trans-regional migration of scholars of “verification” (tahqiq) with special training in rhetoric, logic, and theology; the spread of new mystical Islamic orders from North Africa and Central Asia; and, in the context of Ottoman political decentralization, an evolution in the central texts of the Hanafi school of law, the official school of the empire. Returning to intellectual production, the final paper presents a social and literary analysis of the “commoner” chronicle of the 18th-century Levant. Originally a genre monopolized by the learned class (ulama), the chronicle in 18th century was appropriated by members of other classes (artisans, farmers, and soldiers) and was correspondingly reshaped. The paper examines embedded tragi-comic narratives as moments of laughter during which the powerful (i.e. the ulama and other elites) were mocked.
The Occult Sciences in the Early Modern Ottoman Context
Friday, 11/19/10 11:00am
The purpose of this panel is to draw attention to one of the most important, but hitherto least studied, aspects of the early modern Ottoman Empire: the occult sciences. Despite its richness in terms of primary source material and its ubiquity in both “popular” and “learned” sectors of society, researchers in Ottoman studies have largely overlooked this vital aspect of early modern cultural life. As the first joint attempt to discuss the role of the occult sciences in the early modern Ottoman world, our panel seeks to highlight the significance of the topic in understanding early modern Ottoman society and culture in several respects. The subject is vast and multifaceted, not least because of the number of branches pertaining to knowledge of divination and magic such as astrology, alchemy, numerology, and physiognomy to name a few. Even so, this breadth promises tremendous opportunities to explore various approaches to historical writing.
In the broadest terms, contributors to the panel will address how these bodies of knowledge were received, developed, and manipulated by various Ottoman social groups. The prophetic nature of the divinatory practices promoted by the occult sciences represented an important flashpoint in political and theological debates unfolding within scholarly, sufi, and state circles. As such, the panel will seek to explore the specific ways in which the occult sciences played a role in the political, religious, and scholarly debates of the day. In a somewhat related vein, we will seek to connect the Ottoman practicioners and consumers of the occult sciences with those older texts and sources that informed their development in the Ottoman context. Issues to be considered will include the place of the occult sciences within the broader tradition of Islamicate learning, the (re)production and transmission of older works in an Ottoman context, and the relationship between authoritative and popular uses of this knowledge. These themes will be explored as they relate to the reception of the occult sciences in the context of the Ottoman court, ulama, sufi groups, and the general populace.
Transformation of Ottoman Medical Discourse: Disease, Knowledge, and Society
Friday, 11/19/10 08:30am
Until recently, scholars have viewed Ottoman medicine as a static and unchanging body of knowledge and practices derived from classical Islamic medical traditions. The commonly-held assumption is that Ottoman medicine only started to change with the advent of modernity, meaning the wholesale incorporation of Western medical ideas and practices. This panel seeks to challenge this conventional view and aims to highlight the dynamic nature of Ottoman medicine. It examines the production of new medical knowledge among the Ottomans and their participation in a global exchange of ideas and practices across the early modern and modern periods of history. In so doing, our panel will demonstrate that Ottoman medicine was not only as an active recipient of new medical ideas circulating around the world, but also a lively intellectual milieu where new ideas developed and were integrated into traditional medical schemes.
Revisiting the Ottoman Imperial Project: Its Advocates and Critiques in the 15th and 16th Centuries
Sunday, 11/21/10 01:30pm
Existing literature on the early modern Ottoman Empire focuses on the overall success of the empire’s imperial project with specific emphasis on its geographical expansion, bureaucratic and administrative experimentation in the 15th and 16th centuries. Within that heuristic framework, the focus centers on the empire’s elites, who sought imperial success and responded to new challenges on several fronts by reevaluating and revisiting traditional notions and perceptions. This panel seeks to reevaluate the Ottoman imperial project during the reigns of Mehmed II, Selim I and Suleyman I: For one, the panel will seek to consider the voices of opposition and discontent alongside the champions of the Ottoman imperial vision in the East and in the West. In so doing, the panelists will challenge categorical assumptions about the development of the Ottoman project, paying particular attention to the fluid and shifting connections between the reigns of Mehmed II, Selim I and Suleyman I.
The panelists will explore how the imperial vision was formulated and how the socio-political values of the Ottoman elite adjusted to an imperial ideology. As a whole, the panel will argue that the Ottoman imperial project was a work in progress, not a fait accompli. With this aim in mind, the panelists will explore: the political agendas behind the critique of the Candarli family during the early stages of the empire-building project; the relationship between the Ottoman geographical consciousness and the imperial project through an analysis of a travel account on China from reign of Selim I; the boundaries of the imperial project in Egypt in a decade following its conquest in 1517 through the imaginary and real crossing paths of a conqueror, a Cairene saint/shah and a Hanefi judge/chronicler; the Sehname literature and its impact on the empire-building project in the late 16th century with a focus on the sanctimonious depictions of Suleyman as the divinely-willed Ottoman Sultan.
Slaves, Renegades, and Concubines: The Intersection Between Captivity and Conversion in the Early Modern Ottoman World
Friday, 11/19/10 08:30am
his panel will examine the confluence of religious conversion and captivity in the early modern Ottoman world. In part as a response to stereotypes of widespread forcible state conversion of Christians and Jews—especially slaves—to Islam, much previous scholarship has explained such conversions as purely cynical acts undertaken in order to gain access to privilege and social or political success This panel seeks to re-evaluate this claim, arguing that religious conversion in the Ottoman empire was a much more complicated act than either (1) cynical self-advancement or (2) individual spiritual conviction. These four case studies seek to re-interpret the act of religious conversion according to ideas of collective identity and belonging, in addition to the concept of religious conversion as a means of “career advancement” in the pre-modern Ottoman world. These papers use a wide variety of sources to show the rich diversity of different motivations which did, or did not, lead to conversion.
War and Society in the Late Ottoman Empire
Saturday, 11/20/10 05:00pm
War has effects far beyond the immediate winners and losers, beyond the large-scale political effects, effects which reverberate throughout the military, the soldiers, the leadership, and throughout society as a whole. This panel examines various ways in which late Ottoman society was affected by wars from the 1878 Russo-Ottoman war through WWI. Combining social, cultural, and intellectual historical approaches, the panel illustrates some of the ways in which a broader understanding of the large-scale effects of war can help us to understand political and social change in the final decades of the Ottoman Empire.
Women, Education, and the Nation in Ottoman and Turkish Modernity
Friday, 11/19/10 02:00pm
This panel examines the connections between education and modernist and nationalist ideologies in the final decades of the Ottoman Empire and the early years of post-Ottoman Turkey by drawing on archival, literary, press, and oral historical evidence. It considers education as an array of institutions and practices including formal institutions of learning, adult educational programs, literature, and the press. Together these papers reveal that despite the rhetoric to the contrary there was a great deal of continuity between the educational goals of late Ottoman and post-Ottoman reformers and intellectuals. These papers also attend to gendered aspects of educational ideologies and policies.
Rethinking Ottomanism: Citizenship, Nationhood, and Late Imperial Modernity
Friday, 11/19/10 02:00pm
Studies of nation-making and nation-hood in the Middle East have undergone dramatic reinterpretations over the last few decades. To a large extent, the ethnic nation and the post-colonial territory have been the main foci of study of “nation-making” in the Middle East, and the approach has remained far too often idealist, elitist, and secularist. In recent years, however, insights from political culture, citizenship studies, and postcolonial studies have made their appearance in Middle Eastern Studies and have contributed to a growing body of scholarship that takes as its starting point a “culture of nationalism” in the Middle East not dissimilar to the rest of the late 19th, early 20th century world.
The Rise of Neo-Ottomanism in the Middle East: Turkey’s Emerging New Role in the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Friday, 11/19/10 08:30am
This roundtable will provide an opportunity for scholars and policy-makers working on Middle East regional politics, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and Turkish foreign policy to reflect critically on the causes and implications of the emergence of a “new” Turkey in the Middle East. The panel will address such questions as: What accounts for Turkey’s new role in the region, particularly with regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestine problemr How does Turkey’s new orientation differ from its previous foreign policyn Is this shift temporary, or is it related to long-term historical or geo-strategic considerations of substantive national interesti To what extent does the policy change reflect an ideological shift relating to questions of Islamic identity, democratization, and the increased role of non-state actors in policy formationo What does the Turkish case tell us about the role of democratization in the making of foreign policy.
Agriculture and the Politics of Modernity in the Late Ottoman Empire: Contesting Spaces, Managing Populations, and Institutionalizing Knowledge and Practice
Friday, 11/19/10 11:00am
Throughout the history of the Ottoman Empire, agricultural production played a critical role in structuring relationships between different actors and influencing the politics of land use. However, as the nineteenth century progressed, agriculture, like many other aspects of life, increasingly became a site of reform and an object of modernization policies. Taking a historically broad and interdisciplinary approach, the papers in this panel trace the shifts in agricultural practice and production that accompanied this modernization project. They illustrate the specificities involved in organizing communities and establishing institutions in an effort to facilitate agricultural progress and the impact these projects had on relationships between local, state and international actors.