Description
Sometimes framed as a vital inheritance, sometimes as an object of nostalgia, and still other times as a relic of backwardness, the Ottoman past has long been an object of debate and contestation in 20th century Turkey. In this talk, "Scaling Heritage: Urban Governance and Struggles Over the Ottoman Past in Istanbul," Timur Hammond looks at one especially important moment in that debate: the district of Eyüp in the 1990s and 2000s. Looking at the changing role of municipal governance, Hammond both shows how these urban debates mirrored broader cultural fault lines and offers a more nuanced reading of the motivations behind municipal actors’ conservation efforts.Timur Hammond is an associate professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment at Syracuse University. A cultural and urban geographer, he has published widely on topics including Turkey’s July 2016 coup attempt, the artist and scholar Ahmet Süheyl Ünver, and the geographies of translation. His first book, Placing Islam: Geographies of Connection in 20th Century Istanbul, was published open access in 2023 by the University of California Press.This event is part of the Middle Eastern Cities in Conflict series organized by the Peace and Conflcit Studies Program. It is cosponsored by the Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies program.