ISTANBUL Talks/Arch 508/ 1720 Festival

ISTANBUL Talks/Arch 508/ 1720 Festival

April 28, 2021/Wednesday/19:00
Venue: Khas Arch Youtube Channel

 In the fourth of our Spring Talks series Sinem Erdoğan will discuss the spectacular 1720 public Festival celebrated on occasion of the circumcision of Sultan Ahmed III (r. 1703-1730)’s four sons. This talk will discuss semiotic aspects of the festival sites  (Ceremonial center of the Old City, Okmeydanı and Tersane Imperial Palaces across the Golden Horn) and their relations with the projection of the imperial imagery based on a comparative evaluation of the illustrated festival books, contemporary narratives as well as the related archival documents.

This talk is a joint event with the ARCH 508 Ritual and Architecture course. It will be moderated by Ufuk Soyöz from KHAS Architecture Department and will be broadcast live on KhasArch Youtube channel.

Sinem Erdoğan İşkorkutan
Sinem Erdoğan İşkorkutan earned her Ph.D. from Boğaziçi University Department of History in September 2017. Her research focuses on the early modern Ottoman visual culture and Ottoman cultural history. Her PhD thesis presented the first comprehensive monograph on an Ottoman imperial festival and it was awarded with the Boğaziçi University Scientific Research Fund Doctoral Dissertation Award. She received grants and scholarships from several institutions including TUBITAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey), ARIT (American-Turkish Research Institute in Turkey), the Boğaziçi University Research Fund, the Barakat Trust, and The Istanbul Research Institute. In 2017 she co-convened an international symposium on Ottoman celebrations and festivals at Yale University. In 2019 she co-edited a themed special volume at the Journal of Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association (JOTSA), where the proceedings of this symposium were published. Her articles appeared in the Medieval History Journal, the Journal of Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, the Journal of Ottoman Studies, and most recently in Muqarnas. She is the author of book, The 1720 Imperial Circumcision Celebrations in Istanbul: Festivity and Representation in the Early Eighteenth Century, published by Brill.