Activities - Both Shores of the Aegean.

September 30, 2005 - Assist. Prof. Akis Papataxiarchis
Reform, Revolt and Contested Nationality in the Making of the Greek-Ottoman Frontier
In his lecture, Akis Papataxiarchis will address a major crisis that occurred in Ayvalik/Kydonies in April 1842, three years after the promulgation of the Gülhane Hatt-i Serifi and the beginning of the Tanzimat reforms, and a year before the Constitutional Revolution in Greece, when
G. Mavrogordatos, King Otto's special envoy and ex prime-minister, was negotiating the "Commercial Treaty" between the Greeks and the Ottomans with his counterparts in Istanbul. Although of usually diverging opinions and viewpoints on Greek-Ottoman matters, most of the available primary and secondary sources concurred in describing the rebellion as a tax 'revolt'. Adopting a micro-historical, bottom-up perspective, Papataxiarchis will discuss the interrelated aspects of this multifaceted event, including factional strife (among Ottoman Christians), contested nationality and boundary negotiation.

Akis Papataxiarchis obtained his Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics in 1988 with a thesis entitled, Kinship, Friendship and Gender Relations in two Village Communities (Lesbos, Greece). In 1986, he was appointed to the Department of History and Social Anthropology at the University of the Aegean, in Mytilene, where he has been teaching as assistant professor since 1989. He has been invited, as a visiting scholar, to the University of Crete, Bogaziçi University, the London School of Economics, and the Ecoles des Hautes Etudes in Paris. Papataxiarchis has published extensively on issues of gender, cultural and social strategies, and issues of methodology and is co-editor of the volumes Contested Identities: Gender and Kinship in Modern Greece, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991, with P. Loizos and Lillies of the Field: Marginal People Who Live for the Moment, Westview Press, 1999, with S. Day and M. Stewart Boulder.

October 21, 2005 - Prof. Filiz Yenisehirlioglu
Urban Texture and Architectural Styles after the Tanzimat
Illustrating her lecture with examples from Greece and Istanbul, Filiz Yenisehirlioglu will discuss the changes occurring in the urban fabric, architectural styles and inhabitants of Ottoman cities, after the Tanzimat. The formation of new institutions, in this period, required the importation of plans and building types unknown before the 19th century. As new governmental, educational, commercial and military buildings were introduced to the cities, both domestic architecture and interior decoration changed. Shaped by the modernist approach of the times and supported by the regulations of the Tanzimat, a new type of citizen emerged, needing new social spaces to circulate and to socialize in.

After graduating from the Arnavutköy American College for Girls, Yenisehirlioglu studied art history at the Sorbonne University where she obtained her BA, MA, and Ph.D in the same discipline. From 1976 to 2002, she taught Islamic and Ottoman art, at both graduate and undergraduate levels, at Hacettepe University and, since 2003, she has been dean of the Department of Visual Arts and Design at Baskent University. In 1986, Yenisehirlioglu also participated, as guest researcher, in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Art and Architecture, at Harvard. Her numerous published works on art history, include: Le Programme Décoratif des Edifices Ottomans au cours du XVI ème siècle, Atatürk Kültür Merkezi, Ankara, 1985; Ottoman Architectural Works Outside of Turkey, T.C. Disisleri Bakanligi Kültür Genel Müdürlügü Yayinlari (in Turkish and English), Ankara, 1989 and (with Fatih Müderrisoglu, Suat Alp and Mustafa Akpolat), Mersin Evleri, T.C. Kültür Bakanligi Yayini, Ankara 1995.

November 11, 2005 - Sefer Güvenç
80 Years of Longing: Reunion of Displaced Turks and Greeks
Sefer Guvenc, himself from a family that originally emigrated from Greece, will focus on the Turks and Greeks displaced more than 80 years ago with the 1923 compulsory population exchange between Turkey and Greece.

Sefer Guvenc was born in 1945 to a family that had immigrated from Thessaloniki-Langada to Tekirdag-Malkara. After graduating, in 1972, from the Department of Philosophy at Istanbul University, he served as director of various non-governmental organizations and trade unions. In November, 1999, following the earthquake catastrophes in the Marmara region and in Athens, he initiated "The Children of the Exchange" with a group of friends, hoping to contribute to the developing friendship between Turkey and Greece. In 2001, he was among the founding members of the Lausanne Exchanged Populations Foundation and has been its Secretary General since the date of its establishment.

November 18, 2005 - Prof. Alexandra Yerolympos
Urban Transformations in the European Provinces of the Ottoman Empire at the End of the 19th Century
In her lecture, Yerolympos addresses the process of change undergone by cities in the European provinces of the empire in their final years under Ottoman rule (1830-1912). Along with its commitment to the Tanzimat reform movement, the state had begun to take interest in the form and fabric of towns and cities and was creating new institutions and instruments to implement policies for city planning. At the same time, the various ethnic and religious groups making up these urban populations were becoming involved in the process, actively demanding recognition of their newly acquired rights and actual participation in the evolving townscape.

By identifying the substantial changes which occurred in these towns, Yerolympos proposes to examine the concept of modernization in itself and its link to urban planning, in the growing role of municipalities, newspapers and citizens' commitees. Indeed, she will suggest that an essential element of the modernization process going on was the attempt to foster "a sense of belonging to the city," which, given the particular political and geographical context in which the changes were taking place, became an endeavor of crucial significance.

Alexandra Yerolympos studied architecture in Thessaloniki and planning in Paris, where she practiced for many years with architectural and planning firms. She has been on the faculty of the School of Architecture at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki since 1976 and is the author of books and articles on the planning history of Greece, the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire. Yerolympos has also participated in urban design projects for the old harbor market of Thessaloniki, the quay and the intra muros city of Thessaloniki.

December 9, 2005 - Assist. Prof. Meltem Toksöz
A Migrant-Merchant Family from Mersin: The Mavromatis
Meltem Toksöz approaches the history of Mersin, which came into being in the second half of the 19 th century as part of an Ottoman regional development, via the narrative of one migrant-merchant family of this southern port of Anatolia.The story of the Mavromatis reveals a multifaceted regional construction through a reconstitution of places, and of the relations between places, on a range of scales - town and hinterland, coast and interior, Adana-Mersin, municipalities and provinces, the state and the world.

After receiving a BA in International Relations from the University of Ankara (1987) and an MA in South Asian History from the University of Virginia (1991), Toksöz pursued her graduate work with language studies in Arabic and Ottoman Turkish in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Yale University and, in 2001, obtained her Ph.D. in Ottoman History from Binghamton University (SUNY). Meltem Toksöz was awarded several grants and fellowships including a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship (1994-1995) for her dissertation research in Turkey. She currently teaches in the Department of History at Bogaziçi University.

December 23, 2005 - Nefin Dinç, Muammer Ketencoglu, Stelyo Berberis
Rebetiko: The Song of Two Cities
The documentary in English, Rebetiko: the Song of Two Cities, recounts the emergence of Rebetiko on both shores of the Aegean, highlighting the interaction of Greek and Turkish music which created this musical form, and showing the ways in which this interaction continues. The screening will be followed by a discussion with the film's director Nefin Dinç, researcher and musician Muammer Ketencoglu, and musician Stelyo Berberis.

"Rebetiko: the Song of Two Cities" explores the contribution of the great exodus of 1922 and 1923 to the evolution of Rebetiko music, and the point Rebetiko has reached in Turkey and Greece today. The documentary, shot in 2004 and 2005 in both countries, consists of interviews with musicians from immigrant families in Greece and Rebetiko experts from Greece and Turkey, and footage from both countries including songs sung together in taverns. "Rebetiko: the Song of Two Cities" is still screened today at various festivals and universities in the US, Greece, England, Spain, Italy and Turkey.

Nefin Dinç worked as an assistant director for various TV programs and production firms, while pursuing her studies in Economics at the University of Ankara. In 1997, she received her MA in Media and Culture from the University of Strathclyde in the UK. Her first directing experience was for the Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) production, Cumhuriyet Treni ("The Republic Train"). She has served as assistant director for various production firms, commercials and feature films in Istanbul . In 2002, she went to the US to pursue graduate studies and made the documentaries, "Rebetiko: the Song of Two Cities" and "I Named You Angel," (a documentary about the Whirling Dervishes), as part of her graduate program. Both of these documentaries are still screened at festivals and universities in the US, Turkey and other European countries today. Nefin Dinç is currently an assistant professor in the Communication Department of SUNY Fredonia. She is also actively engaged in new projects.

February 10, 2006 – Dr. Dimitrios Stamatopoulos
Byzance après Nation: Memory and Ecumenicity in the Orthodox Millet (19th - 20th c.)
In opposition to interpretations which deal either with the concept of ecumenicity independently from its historical context or equate it with variants of Greek nationalism, Stamatopoulos will propose a model approaching the topic both within the political framework of the Tanzimat reforms in the Ottoman Empire, and in relation to the major European ideological currents with which members of Istanbul’s Greek Orthodox intellectual elite were conversant.

Dimitrios Stamatopoulos received his Ph.D. from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 1998. In 2001, he was a visiting fellow at Princeton University. Since 2000, he has taught history at the University of Macedonia, in the Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies. He was appointed lecturer in Balkan and Late Ottoman history in the same department in 2003. His book, Reform and Secularization: Towards a Re-synthesis of the History of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the 19th Century (Alexandria, Athens, 2003), deals with the influence of the Tanzimat reforms on internal political relations as well as on the functioning of the institution of the Patriarchate. His current interests focus on the relationship between religion and politics in the Balkans and more specifically on the process of  secularization and the rise of civil society.

March 24, 2006 – Dr. Ilay Romain Örs
Identity and the City: Rum Polites in Athens
In her lecture, Örs discusses her research on the Rum Polites, the Christian Orthodox community of Istanbul, who now, for the most part, reside in Athens. With examples from her field study, Dr. Örs will demonstrate how the Rum Polites have retained a distinct cultural existence in their everyday life, their social organization, and their intellectual and artistic production. In her words: " Ethnographic insights into the Rum Polites reveal the significance of the idea of ‘cultural belonging,’ derived from the urban cosmopolitan legacy of Istanbul and its special status as  ‘the City.’ The exploration of a place from the perspective of the displaced can open up new vistas in understanding concepts like migration, diaspora, and urban identity."

After obtaining BA degrees from the Department of Sociology, and the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Boğaziçi University, she earned her M.Sc. in Social Anthropology from University College, London. Örs is a candidate for a joint Ph.D. degree in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. She has successfully defended her dissertation on the present and recent past of the Greek Orthodox population of Istanbul (Rum Polites) in Athens, titled, "The Last of the Cosmopolitans? Exploring the Cultural Identity of the City in Diaspora." Her recent publications include an article titled "Beyond the Greek and Turkish Dichotomy: The Rum Polites of Istanbul and Athens" in South European Society & Politics (11/1) and a chapter in the edited volume, When Greeks Think about Turks: A Perspective from Anthropology (ed. Theodossopoulos 2006, London: Frank Cass). She is currently working on a book manuscript based on her fieldwork on the Rum Polites.

April 14, 2006 - Dr. Maria Christina Chatziioannou
Creating the Ottoman-Greek Merchant (1780-1870): Sources, Methods and Historiography
In order to retrace the creation of the Ottoman-Greek merchant over a 90-year period, Dr. Chatziioannou examines Greek commercial archives from a largely micro history and history of enterprises standpoint. Chatziioannou believes that a comparative analysis of medium size, middlemen merchants may enrich the existing views on merchant capitalism of development models. She is convinced that a historical observation of the merchant-businessman on a micro scale, mobilizing various methodological approaches, does not imply an eclectic view of the topic but rather a complementary one.

Dr. Chatziioannou, graduated from the Department of History at the University of Athens in 1978. In 1980, she completed a master’s program in history at the Scuola di Perfezionamento di Storia Medioevale e Moderna, at the University of Sapienza in Rome. She obtained her Ph.D. in modern history from the University of Athens, in 1989. She has published on several historical issues of social and economic history such as, Greek merchant houses and entrepreneurs, the development of Greek cities, and Italian historiography. Chatziioannouis, who is director of studies at the National Hellenic Research Foundation, is currently engaged in a multidisciplinary and comparative study of merchant networks and business enterprises in the Eastern Mediterranean, during the 18th and 20th centuries.

May 12, 2006 – Assoc. Prof. Nukhet Adiyeke
Last Identity Clash in Ottoman Crete: The Candia Events of 1898
Assoc. Prof. Nukhet Adiyeke will examine Crete under Ottoman rule in her presentation. While the February 3, 1830 Treaty of London mapped out the borders of independent Greece, Crete, like a number of other regions inhabited by Greeks, remained outside state boundaries. As both the rise of nationalistic trends and the movement for Greek independence began to affect Crete and the two societies acquired more distinctly defined identities, nationalist struggles and conflicts replaced formerly close public and social relationships.

Adıyeke was born in İzmir in 1964 and graduated from Dokuz Eylül University where she also completed her master’s and Ph.D. programs. From 1996 to 2000, she worked as an assistant professor in the Department of History at Mersin University and since 2000, is associate professor in the same department.  Her research focuses on the history of Crete under Ottoman rule. She has publications in Turkish and in English on the demographic and socio-economic structure of Crete’s Ottoman population in particular, the relations between Crete and Anatolia under Ottoman rule, and the establishment of international administration on the island.

June 16, 2006 - Assist. Prof. Christine Philliou
Integrating "Rum"and "Ottoman"in the Early 19th Century
Christine Philliou points out that in the 18th and early 19th centuries, Phanariot princes constituted the upper echelon of lay Orthodox Christian society as well as the interface between Orthodox Christian and Ottoman power structures. In her presentation, she will describe and analyze the investiture ceremony for Phanariot princes on their way to Moldavia and Wallachia in the early 19th century to explore and illustrate the many-tiered relationship between Rum and Ottoman on the eve of the Greek Revolution.

After obtaining her master’s degree from the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Princeton University in 1998, Philliou earned her Ph.D. from the History Department at the same university with a doctoral dissertation entitled "Worlds Old and New: Phanariot Networks and the Remaking of Ottoman Governance in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century."From 2004 to 2006, she taught in the Hellenic Studies Program and History Department at Yale University, and  she recently has been a member of the faculty in the History Department at Columbia University.

June 23, 2006 - Prof. Stephanos Pesmazoglou
"Scarlatos Vyzantios’ Constantinoupolis: Difference and Fusion
Pesmazoglou will attempt to shed light on the themes and the structure of Constantinoupolis, the major work on Istanbul of Greek thinker Scarlatos Vyzantios. In his work, Vyzantios gave a detailed account of Istanbul’s past and the 19th century in which he lived, systematically observing events, people, and behaviors and including social differences within a broader context of cultural fusion. In his lecture, Pesmazoglou will focus on the reasons why Vyzantios’ opus magnum hasremained largely ignored over the roughly 150 years since its first publication between 1841 and 1869. Vyzantios’ three-volume study examined Ottomans, Europeans and Greeks from a comparative perspective, searching for continuities between Byzantines and Ottomans, and distinguished itself from other works of its epoch by the generally positive stance it adopted toward the Ottoman Empire.

Currently a faculty member in the Department of Political Science and History at the Panteion University of Athens, Prof. Pesmazoglou was a visiting professor at Princeton University in 1999, and at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, in 2005. Pesmazoglou, who specializes in the political theory of ideology, is co-editor of the social sciences review Synchrona Themata and has conducted research and written numerous articles, published in journals and collective volumes, on the political, ideological and educational aspects of postwar South European societies (including the Balkan South East) and Turkey.