Speaker: Murat Yildiz, 2015-16 Manoogian Post-doctoral Fellow

Scholarship on the modern Middle East has been characterized by a propensity to analyze cultural, social, economic, and political transformations that (re)shaped life in the region along ethnic and sectarian lines. Dominant historical accounts focus on Muslims, while discussions about Christians and Jews are generally confined to an analysis of a single community. Such an approach has obscured historical linkages and the similar ways in which people from different communities in multiethnic and multiconfessional urban centers of the Middle East experienced and played an active role in shaping the contours of modernity in the region. This presentation seeks to contribute to a “new school” of scholarship that investigates transformations in the late Ottoman Empire across sectarian divisions. Specifically, it focuses on the emergence of a shared sports culture amongst Ottoman Turks and Armenians in early-twentieth-century Istanbul. This culture centered around the belief that the regular performance of physical exercise, gymnastics, and “western” team sports was the most effective means to form robust young men, modern communities, and a civilized empire. The presentations uses sports as a lens through which to observe the ways in which Turks and Armenians, as well as other Ottoman citizens, collectively shaped novel practices, beliefs, and norms in the imperial domains.

Cosponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies (CMENAS) and the Department of History.