Conference: "Changing Feminist Paradigms and Cultural Encounters"

Changing Feminist Paradigms and Cultural Encounters: Women's Experiences in Eastern Mediterranean History in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Date: June 7-9,  2013
Place: Boğaziçi University,Cultural Heritage Museum Seminar Room (June 7, Friday - June 9, Sunday)
İstanbul Bilgi University, santralistanbul Campus, Santral Residence, Board of Trustees Meeting Room  (June 8, Saturday)

June 7, Friday (Boğaziçi University, Cultural Heritage Museum Seminar Room)

9:30-10:30 Opening Speeches
Jean Quataert (Binghamton University, Co-editor, Journal of Women’s History)
Leigh Ann Wheeler (Binghamton University, Co-editor, Journal of Women’s History)
Arzu Öztürkmen (Boğaziçi University, Journal of Women’s History)

10:30-11:00 Coffee Break

11:00-12:30 Women Pioneers, Agency, and Activism
Chair: Leigh Ann Wheeler (Binghamton University, Co-editor, Journal of Women’s History)
• Ana Stjelja (Independent Scholar), Historical Patterns of Women’s Activism in the Region: The Case of Serbian Writer Jelena J. Dimitrijevic (1862-1945)
• Nevila Pahumi (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor), Visions of a Petite Diplomate: Paraskevi Kyrias and “Albania” at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 
• Umut Azak (Okan University)/Henk de Smaele (University of Antwerp), National and Transnational Dynamics of Women's Activism in Turkey in the 1950s and 1960s: The Story of the IWC Branch in Ankara

12:30-14:00 Lunch Break

14:00-15:30 Can We Speak of “Women”? Different Agendas, Different Feminisms
Chair: Benita Roth (Binghamton University, Associate Editor, Journal of Women’s History)
• Amani Soliman (King’s College), Non-Muslim Feminists in Egypt's Early 20th Century: A Double Challenge
• Başak Tuğ (İstanbul Bilgi University),  The Alternative Modernity of Sabiha Sertel’s Cicianne

15:30-16:00 Coffee Break 

16:00-17:00 Education, Agency and Nationalism
Chair: Arzu Öztürkmen (Boğaziçi University, Journal of Women’s History)
• Ellen Fleishmann (University of Dayton), Education and Agency in Early Twentieth-Century Lebanon: Women Educated “Under an American Roof”
• Nadya Sbaiti (Five College), Separate in our Togetherness? Education for Women and Nation in Interwar Lebanon

18:00 Dinner, Boğaziçi University Cultural Heritage Museum

June 8, Saturday (İstanbul Bilgi University, santralistanbul Campus, Santral Residence, Board of Trustees Meeting Room)

9:30-11:00 Reconstructing the Untold Experiences
Chair: Jean Quataert (Binghamton University, Co-editor, Journal of Women’s History)
• Ebru Aykut (Mimar Sinan University), Home-Rebels in the Late Ottoman Empire: Murderous Wives and Female Arsonists
• Nadezha Alexandrovna (Sofia University), Bulgarian Women in Istanbul in the 1860s and 1880s
• Yavuz Selim Karakışla (Boğaziçi University), Nursing in the Ottoman Empire, 1854-1923

11:00-11.30    Coffee Break

11:30-13:00 Gendered Experiences of Inclusion and Exclusion
Chair: Elisa Camiscioli (Binghamton University, Book Review Editor, Journal of Women’s History)
• Gülhan Balsoy (Işık University), The Women of the Haseki Women’s Hospital and Being a Poor and Lonely Woman in Late Nineteenth-Century Istanbul
• Kent Schull (Binghamton University), State Patriarchy and Gendered Incarceration:  Women, Children, and Prison Reform in the Late Ottoman Empire
• Liat Kozma (Hebrew University), The Traffic in Women and Children in the Middle East in the Interwar Period

13:00-14:30 Lunch Break

14:30-16:00 Challenging the Nationalist Historiographies
Chair: Yeşim Arat (Boğaziçi University, Journal of Women’s History)
• Zeynep Türkyılmaz (Dartmouth College), Being the Mother for Others’ Daughters:  Maternal Colonialism and the Female Nation-Builders of the Turkish Republic
• Rezzan Karaman (University of California, Los Angeles), The Formation of Gender Roles within the Context of Kurdish National Discourse in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries
• Selda Tuncer (Middle East Technical University), Going Public: Women’s Everyday Experiences of Public Space in Turkey

16:00-16:30 Coffee Break

16:30-18:00 Roundtable Discussion
Moderator: Nükhet Sirman (Boğaziçi University)
Feminist Publishing in Turkey and the US:  Comparative Histories and Experiences 

19:00 Dinner

June 9 , Sunday (Boğaziçi University, Cultural Heritage Museum Seminar Room)

9:00-11:30 Discourses on Women
Chair: Suraiya Faroqhi (İstanbul Bilgi University)
• Ceyda Karamousalis (University of Pennsylvania), Re-reading the Second Constitutional Era through Women and Slavery
• Eftymia Kanner (University of Athens), Communal Interaction, Discourses on Women’s Rights and Feminist Interventions from the Ottoman Reform Era to the Early Turkish Republic
• Katerina Dalakoura (University of Crete), Discourses on Women’s Emancipation in Greek Women’s Journals (1880-1911): “Feminisms” in Ottoman context

11:30-12.00 Coffee Break 

12:00-13:30 Closing Remarks

14:00-18:00 Visit to Topkapı Palace and Harem