Anatolian Memories
A look at memories and memorializations of multiethnic Anatolia through a variety of memoirs and fiction works.
Two Sides of the Black Sea: Ukrainian Advocacy in the Ottoman Empire
On occasion, old books can have oddly prescient titles. Ukrayna, Rusya, Türkiye: Makaleler Mecmuası is one such book. I came across it during one of my usual cataloguing sweeps, and thought that I’d shelve it somewhere in my memory. And that’s where that knowledge has lived for the last few years. But since Russia invaded…
Kitab, nom, kinige, or bichik: the more the merrier!
A look at the various words for “book” in the Turkic languages, their roots, and their appearance across media and time.
日本のチュルク人 : A Look at Soviet Turkic Exile Politics in Japan
A look at 1930s Turkic exile politics in Japan through the history of a Yangi Yapon Mokhbire magazine.
Eşim ve Ben: Post-Modern Sex in a Post-Coup Turkey
An exploration of Eşim ve Ben,an encyclopedia of sex from 1980’s Turkey, and its context following the 12 September Coup.
The Historicity of the Mundane: Turkish Periodicals from the 1930s
What the ephemera of the everyday gives us is how ordinary people lived through such changes; how they saw them reflected in themselves, and how they, in turn, saw themselves reflected or erased in new ideals.
The Sanzhyra: An Unabashedly Personal History
History is a funny thing. For starters, the word has many different connotations in English. It might be events and situations in the past. Or it could be the study of those happenings (but not the study of the study, that’s historiography). And, of course, it has colloquial uses too: “We’ve got history” speaks to…
On Vampires, Ghouls and Witches
As a child, I liked to believe that I had a particular connection to the Dracula myth. My grandmother was from a town called Tusnád, now Tușnad, Harghita Prefecture, Romania. It lies about 70 km north from Brașov (called Brasó in Hungarian), and 100 km from Castelul Bran, erstwhile castle of the now infamous Vlad…
From Altay to Yughur 