We’re pleased to welcome Mehmet Kalpakli, of the Department of History, Bilkent University, for today’s Research Seminar, ‘Social Networking During the “Age of Beloveds”: Parties, Poetry and Patronage‘. (This is a joint seminar with the Centre for Postcolonial Studies and the Medieval and Early Modern Studies Centre.)
The party (Meclis) —both as idealized in poetry and as performed at all levels of Ottoman society as a gathering for sociable enjoyment—is central to visualizing the structure and sense of Ottoman poetry. The actual meclis was the material representation of networks of mutual support among bonded individuals. Symmetrical social and emotional bonding between actors on different levels of power, as scripted and rehersed in the poetry and embodied in the meclis, has an economic as well as a social dimension.
Professor Mehmet Kalpaklı is a member of the Department of Turkish Literature and Chair of the Department of History and Director of Ottoman Research Center at Bilkent University. He is also Deputy Director of the Institute of Economic and Social Sciences at Bilkent University. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Washington and Istanbul University (1992). He specializes in Ottoman literature and cultural history. He is a co-founder and an active participant in the Ottoman Text Editing Project (OTAP) at the Middle East Center of the University of Washington and Center for Ottoman Studies of the Bilkent University. He is an Executive Board Member of UNESCO Turkish National Commission.
Some of his publications are: The Age of Beloveds: Love and The Beloved in Early Modern Ottoman Turkish and European Literature, Culture, and Society (with Walter G. Andrews), Duke University Press, USA 2005; Ottoman Lyric Poetry: An Anthology (with Walter Andrews and Najaat Black), The University of Texas Press, 1997, and expanded edition: University of Washington Press in 2006. Osmanli Divan Siiri Üzerine Metinler [Texts on Ottoman Divan Poetry] (İstanbul: Yapi Kredi Yayinlari, Aralik 1999; The Complete Works of Halide Edib Adıvar (18 books) Özgür Yayınları/Can Yayınları.
The seminar takes place today, Thursday 24th October, at 5.00pm in Keynes Lecture Theatre 6. It will be followed by drinks in the English Common Room in the Rutherford Extension. All are welcome.