CFP: Assessing the Ethnic Groups of the Late Ottoman Empire through a Decolonial Lens

From September 13 to September 17 of 1922, a holocaust engulfed the Ottoman city of Izmir. Almost one hundred years to the day, on September 9 of 2022, the Center for Greek Studies, the Center for European Studies, the Center for Jewish Studies and the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program are organizing a two-day symposium that focuses on the political and social events which culminated in the destruction of the city through a decolonial lens. The symposium will take place at the Reitz Student Union over two days with a three-night stay at the Reitz Union Hotel beginning with registration for the presenters on Friday, September 9, 2022, at 6:30 pm and ending on Sunday, September 11, 2022, at 4:00 pm.

The symposium will bring together junior and senior scholars whose research reexamines the political and social atmosphere leading up to and inclusive of political events that impacted ethnic groups of the Ottoman Empire through a decolonial lens. Furthermore, the symposium will feature research that navigates away from recapitulations of modernist frameworks. Research that will be selected for the symposium will view these events through the vantage points of the individuals and ethnic groups within the Ottoman Empire that influenced and impacted their fruition. In this vein, research presentations that focus on the Empire’s Albanians, Arabs, Armenians, Assyrians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Jews, Kurds, Laz, Levantines, Pomaks, Roma, Rum, Serbians, Turks, Vlachs, Yoruks and their respective diasporas through a decolonial lens will be featured. The goal of the symposium is to marshal decolonial theory in order to understand how the dynamics between the Ottoman Empire’s ethnic groups can provide insights for contemporary knowledge production for Armenia, Greece, Cyprus, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Turkey and the United States. The papers selected for the symposium will be featured in a commemorative tome. Researchers are kindly asked to submit their 250-word abstract by January 31, 2022.

https://ogus.oral.history.ufl.edu/events/fall-2022-symposium/abstract-submissions/

Panayotis League (he/him/his)

pleague@fsu.edu

Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology

Director, Center for Music of the Americas

The Florida State University

College of Music