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WOMEN,S HISTORY

BoAzii uNrvnRSITy, SuMMER

2015

Melissa Bilal
meli s sabila|Z @gmai|. c om

COURSE DESCRIPTION
The objective of this course is to introduce a body of literature on women's history,
with an eye on the critical historiography produced by women's movements. It brings
together theoretical readings on feminism, historical texts by feminist women of the
period, and secondary sources on the history of women's political action. This course
has also a specific focus on the critical study of gender and sexuality discourses in the
late Ottoman society. It invites students to develop a critical understanding of
Ottoman modenity, re-organization of the political sphere after Tanzimat, and
communal/inter-communal/state-community relationships. While engaging with
primary sources in multiple languages spoken across the Ottoman territory (in English
translation) and secondary sources on women's activities within the intellectual and
activist space, this course also aims to familiarize the students with the debates that
have been shaping the Ottoman feminist historiography for the last two decades.

WEEK

Day 1 Introduction
Day

2 Writing

'Women's

History: A Critique of Historiography

Joan Wallach Scott. "'Women's History." In New Perspectives on

Peter Burke ed. (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1991): 42-66.

llistorical Writing,

Judith Butler. "Introducti on" Undoing Gender (Routledge, 2004): | -| 6.

Joan Wallach Scott. "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis," American
Historical Review 91, No. 5 (December 1986): 1053-75; "Gende: Still a Useful
Category of Analysis?" Diogenes 57, No. 225 (2010):7-I4.

Day

3 The Significance

of Feminist Movement

bell hooks. "Feminism: A movement to end sexist oppression," "The significance of

feminist movement." In Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (Routledge,2014):
l8-42.

l
]

WEEK2
Day 1 History

of Feminism: Intellectual

Traditions

: C ontinuum'
JosephineDonovan...Enlightenmen|l,ibealfeminism,,,.Nineteenth-centurycultural
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femini sm.,, I F e n,
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2012 [19S5l): I-62,

II
Intellectual Traditions
Feminism:
of
History
Day 2
InFeminist
"Radical feminism,"
and Marxism" &
63-87 and
"Feminism
Continuum, )oii tqg,l):
Josephine Donovan,
theory: the
139-166.

inteile);,";;,;,;;,*, c*J-Y"ik-,

Day 3 llistory

of Feminism: Intellectual

Traditions III

of Women's Rights"'
Movemert ana tqlilt
Anti_Slavery
Movement," In
Angela Davis. "The glack
J::"iir""
Wome,
",|}ffraee
..Working wo*"r,,
and 137-148,
s 30-45
;,*ug"*[,,
Women, Race,

};Z'*

#_-J]-1t;:i!"Tjpoitical

caroleBoyceDavies,,.w9T.l:,ryig;j}"rli;fl

'}:;X;r;r":;"y;;:';,#;?:;::;r:Jili,?**vp*ss,2007):29,68
WEEK

Day 1 History

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P r a ct

ic

of Feminism: Intellectual

"

Traditions IV

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Th e o r

Primary Sources
DayZHistory of Feminism:
essential feminist
Readings from The

lr,l"O.* l,ibrary,

200'7 )

York:
Freedman ed' ('{ew
reader. Estelle B.
1192)

(England,
RiPT,: of Woman,
1 843)
V.indication of th9
(France,
om"",

*MaIy Wollstonecraft, "A

l;rhe Emancip"iffi i,'ing u""w ii;;o"tio"'" (United States
*
Flora rri.t*,
..Deciir'itio, oi"rrii*;
*Elizabeth uhy st*ton,
1867)
1848)
(United States 1851,
Speeches"
"Two
*Sojoumer Truth,

;;

*Francisca Diniz, "Equality of Rights" (Btazil 1890)

*Emma Goldman, "The Tragedy of Women's Emancipation" (United states 1906)
*Alexandra Kollontai, "The Social Basis of the Woman Question" (Russia 1909)
*Emmeline Pankhurst, "Suffrage Speech at Old Bailey," (England I9I2)
*Women's International League For Peace and Freedom, "Resolutions of the Zrich
Conference" (1919)
on Feminism (1913). In
Cohen and Sara Stein eds.
Julia
SephZrdi Lives; Abocumentary History, 1700-t950.
(Stanford University Press, 2014): 23 I,23 4.

A Sephardi Suffragette: A Jewish woman of Izmir lectures

two documents in the

Qasim Amin. The liberation of women and The new woman;
irtory of Egptian feminism trans. Samiha Sidhom Peterson. (Cairo: American
University in Cairo Press, 2000.)
Day 3 History of Feminism: Primary Sources cont,
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Owz. New York: Harcout Brace & Co,, 1989
|1929].

Screening: A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf, Bill Shepherd, Patrick Garland,
Eileen Atkins, oyster Television Film Theatre Ltd., Princeton, NJ: Films for the
Humanities, 2004 [1 990].

WEEK

Day 1 Feminist Historiography in Turkey

Nkhet Sirman. "Feminism in Turkey: A short history," New Perspectives on TurkeY
3, 1 (1989): I-34.

Arzuztirkmen. "The Women's Movement under Ottoman and Republican Rule:

Historical Reappraisa|," Journal of Women's History 25, 4 (2013):256-265,

Lerna Ekmekiolu. "Sonsz - Osmanl ve Trkiye Kadn Hareketi Hakkndaki

Tarhyazmnda Trk velveya Mslman olmayan Kadnlar, Bir Yokluun
Anatomisi" [Epilogue - Anatomy of an Absence: Non-Turkish and/or non-Muslim
Women in the-Historiography of Ottoman and Turksh Women's Movements]." In
Bir Adalet Feryad: Osmnl'dan Cumhuriyet's Be Ermeni Feminist Yazar (]8621933), eds. Lena Ekmekiolu and Melissa Bilal (Istanbui: Aras Yaynclk,2006):
242-264.

'Women's
History I: Petitions and Court Documents
Day 2 Sources in Ottoman
(18t-2gt centuries)

Suraiya Faroqhi. "Crime, Women, and Wealth in the Eighteenth-Century Anatolian

Countryside." In Women in the Ottoman Empire : Middle Eastern women in the early
Modern Era ed. Madeline C. Zl|f, Leiden ;New York : Brill, 1997:197-216.
Fatma Mge Gek and Marc David Baer. "Social Boundaries of Ottoman Women's
Experience in Eighteenth-Century Galata Cout Records." Women in the Ottoman
Empire : Middle Eastern women in the early Modern Era ed. Madeline C. Zl|fi,
Leiden ;New York : Brill,199]:48-65"

Leslie Pierce. "Fatma's Story: The Dilemma of a Pregnant Peasant Girl." In Morality
tales: law and gender in the Ottoman court of Aintab. University of California Press,
2003:35I-374.
Baak Tu, "Ottoman Women as Legal and Marital Subjects." InThe Ottoman World,
ed. Christine Woodhead (London and New York: Routledge, 2012).

Zeynep Kutluata, "Armenian Women's Petitions to the Ottoman State." Ottoman

Women and the State during World War I, Unpublished PhD dissertation, Sabanc
University, 20I 4:I -| 5
.

Day 3 Sources in Ottoman'Women's History II: Memoirs

Excerpts from:
Demetra Yaka
19I4).

A Child of the Orient

(Boston and NY: Houghton Miflin Company,

Zabe| Yesayan, In The Ruins and Gardens of Silihdar

(AIWA Press, 2014).

airNigar, Hayatmn Hikayesi (Ekin Basrmevi, stanbul, 1959).

WEEK

Day 1 MIDTERl\4
Day 2 Sources in Ottoman Women's History III: Periodical Press

Palmira Brummett. "Dressing for Revolution: Mother, Nation, Citizen,

and

Subversive in the Ottoman Satirical Press, 1908-1911." In Deconstructing images of

"the Turkishwoman." ZeIraF. Arat ed. ew York : St. Martin's Press, 1998).

Elizabeth Brown Frierson. "Mirrors out, mirrors in: domestication and rejection of the
foreign in late-Ottoman women's magazines." In Women, patronage, and selfrepresentation in Islamic societies. D. Fairchild Ruggles ed., (Albany: State

University of New York Press, 2000.)

Ayfer Karakaya-Stump, "Debating Progress in a'Serious Newspaper for Muslim

Women': The Periodical "Kadin" of the Post-Revolutionary Salonica, 1908-1909,"
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 30, No. 2 ov., 2003): 1 55- 1 8 1.
Beth Baron, "Pioneers of Women's Press." In The Women's Awakening in Egypt,
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, |994 13-37.

Lerna Ekmekiolu. "A Climate for Abduction, A Clmate for Redemption: The
politics of Incusion during and after the Armenian Genocide," Comparative Studies
in Socief, and Histoy 55, no. 3 (2013): 522-53.
Day

Sources in Ottoman Women's History IV: Literary Fiction and Songs

Victoria Rowe, "Armenian Writers and Women's-Rights Discourse in Turn-of-theTwentieth-Century Constantinople,"

A s p as

2. 1

(Spring 200

8) : 44 - 69

Maral Aktokmakyan, "Comparative Study of Charlotte Bront's Jane Eyre and SrPuhi
Dussap's Mayda,;' inLraper Hasaragagan Kidutyunneri, No. 1-2,2010: 330-339,

Melissa Bila|, "Orof Mayr Hayasdanin: Song and Testimony." In Thou need'st not
lullaby in
weep, for I have wept full sore; An ffictive genealogy of the Armenian
Turkey, Unpublished PhD dissetation, University of Chicago, 20T3 : \ 57,221,

WEEK

Day 1 The New Ottoman Woman

Amila Buturovic and Irvin Cemil Schick, "Introduction." In Women in the Ottoman
Balkans : Gender, Culture and History. Amila Buturovic and Irvin Cemil Schick
(eds.) London, GBR: I.B. Tauris,2007 1-I0,
Janet Klein, "En-Gendering Nationalism: The 'Woman Question' in Kurdish
Nationalist Discourse of the Late ottoman Period." In Women of a non-state nation"
25_5|.
the Kurds. Shahrzad Mojab (ed.), Costa Mesa: MazdaPublishers, 2001:
Alexandre T'oumarkine, Hayriye Melek (Hun), "A Circassian ottoman writer
Women:
between feminism and nationalism." In A Social History of Late ottoman
Brill,
Boston:
(eds.), Leiden,
I,{ew perspectives, Duygu Kksal and Anastasia Falierou
2013:3

8-335.

Zafer Toprak, "The Family, Feminism, and the State during the Young Turk Period,
1908-1918." In Premire Recontre Internationale sur l'Empire Ottoman et la Turquie
Moderne, Edhem Eldem (ed.), Istanbul and Paris: ISIS, 1991, 441-452.

Day 2 Labor and emancipation

Efi Avdela. "Class, ethnicity, and Gender in Post-Ottoman Thessaloniki, The Great
Tobacco Strike of 1914." In Borderlines: Genders and Identities in War and Peace,
1870_ 1930,Bil]lie Melman ed. ew York: Routledge, 1998): 42T-434.
yavuz Selim Karakla. "Hakk- Sktt: The General Strike of Women Silk Workers
at Bursa and Bilecik (1910)," paper submitted to the conference Women in the Arts
and Writing: Negotiating the Ottoman Public Sphere in the ]9th and early 20th
Centuries, Boazii University, April 2006.
Donald Quataert. "Ottoman Women, Households and Textile Manufacturing, i800IgI4." In Women in Middle Eastern History; Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender,
Nikki R. Keddie and Beth Baron eds. (Yale University Press, 1991).

Day 3 Education and Emancipation

Anastasia Falierou, "Enlightened Mothers and Scientfic Housewives: Discussing

Women's Social Roles in Eurydice (Evridiki)." In A Social History of Late Ottoman
Women: New Perspectives, Duygu Kksal and Anastasia Falierou (eds.), Leiden,
Boston: Brill, 20 1 3 : 20I-224.

Rachel Simon, "Between Two Worlds: Education and Acculturaton of Ottoman

'Women." InIn A Social History of Late Ottoman Women: New Perspectives,
Jewish
Duygu Kksal and Anastasia Falierou (eds.), Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2013: 109- 1 3 1
.

Victoria Rowe, "Education is the key: Sibyl and Mariam Khatisian." In A HistorY of
Armenian Women's Writing 1 88 0- ] 9 2 2, Gomidas Institute, 2009 : 7 5 -I30.