Turkey Book Talk #264 – Murat Yıldız, associate professor of history at Skidmore College, on “The Ottoman World of Sports: Refashioning Bodies, Men, and Communities in Late Imperial Istanbul” (University of Texas Press)
The book examines the emergence of sports culture in late Ottoman Istanbul and its implications for developing ideas of modernisation, imperial identity, religious identity, communal identity and gender norms. It also shows how Muslims, Christians and Jews created an athletics culture in schools, clubs and publications that in some ways transcended ethnoreligious divisions but in other ways reinforced them.
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Read a transcript of the interview on Substack.
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Please support Turkey Book Talk as a member on either Substack or Patreon. Members get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, access to transcripts of every interview, transcripts of the whole archive, and links to articles related to the subject of every episode.
Turkey Book Talk #263 – Berin Gür, professor of architecture at Ankara’s TED University, on “The Conquest of Istanbul and the Manipulation of Architecture: The Islamist-Nationalist Rhetoric of Conquest and Melancholy” (Routledge)
The book explores how the 1453 Ottoman conquest of Istanbul is remembered in Turkey’s mainstream official narrative and how architecture contributes to this. It dives deep into the weaponisation of historical memory in the country today, while also considering how Greeks remember the same historical event.
Download the episode or listen below:
Read a transcript of the interview on Substack.
Listen to Turkey Book Talk : Apple / Spotify / PodBean / Stitcher / PlayerFM / Listen Notes
Follow : Instagram / Facebook / Twitter / Bluesky
Please support Turkey Book Talk as a member on either Substack or Patreon. Members get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, access to transcripts of every interview, transcripts of the whole archive, and links to articles related to the subject of every episode.
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