Al-Maqāmāt Al-Aswāniyyah (1970) are a collection of modern maqāmāt featuring a cast of characters from Cairo’s literary scene in the late 1960s. Written by the Egyptian lawyer and author ʻAbbās al-Aswānī (1926-1978), they were a casual and contemporary iteration of the genre, depicting everything from nightlife to Nasserism. They were so modern,…[Read more]

The foreword of YILLIK: Annual of Istanbul Studies 4 (2022)

In this piece, I first introduce Pera’s nineteenth-century sewers as a gateway
to exploring the district’s interconnections with its surrounding geographies,
which requires a close study of infrastructural plans. I then propose the
methodological virtues of juxtaposing these with insurance maps, frequently
utilized in the conventional his…[Read more]

Review of Peter H. Christensen, Germany and the Ottoman Railways: Art, Empire, and Infrastructure. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017.

This open textbook serves as a guide to digital cultural immersion in the Arab world. Each chapter looks at a different country, theme, and medium of Arab culture online. They look at specific sites and conversations taking place online, and offer suggestions and tips for how to engage with the content. The book is meant as a guide to culture…[Read more]

In arguing for the central role of language in the creation of the modern nationalist imaginary, scholars of recent literary histories of both Egypt and Turkey have focused a great deal of energy on commonly accepted narratives of linguistic dysfunction. In Egypt and other Arabic speaking countries, the “diglossia problem” has been the locus for…[Read more]

This conference, co-organized by the Istanbul Research Institute
and Pera Museum, through local and international collaborations, seeks to offer new
insights on the complex layers of Istanbul’s urban landscape. It brings together innovative
studies in the fields of environmental history, political ecology, and critical art studies t…[Read more]