Richard Wittmann

'With pleasure': a comedy, adapted from G. von Moser's play 'Mit Vergnügen'.

Christoph Herzog

Istanbul – Kushta – Constantinople presents twelve studies that draw on contemporary life narratives that shed light on little explored aspects of nineteenth-century Ottoman Istanbul. As a broad category of personal writing that goes beyond the traditional confines of the autobiography, life narratives range from memoirs, letters, reports, travelogues and descriptions of daily life in the city and its different neighborhoods. By focusing on individual experiences and perspectives, life narratives allow the historian to transcend rigid political narratives and to recover lost voices, especially of those underrepresented groups, including women and members of non-Muslim communities. The studies of this volume focus on a variety of narratives produced by Muslim and Christian women, by non-Muslims and Muslims, as well as by natives and outsiders alike. They dispel European Orientalist stereotypes and cross class divides and ethnic identities. Travel accounts of outsiders provide us with valuable observations of daily life in the city that residents often overlooked.

Narratives of Identity in the Ottoman Capital, 1830-1930

Istanbul - Kushta - Constantinople

Claudia Ulbrich

The current volume developed out of an international workshop of the German Research Foundation's Research Group 530 on "self-narratives in a transcultural perspective" [DFG-Forschergruppe 530 "Selbstzeugnisse in transkultureller Per-spektive"] that was held at the Orient-Institut Istanbul from September 29 until October 2, 2009. The workshop formed part of a long-standing cooperation with the Orient-Institut Istanbul, where research on transcultural self-narratives con-tinues beyond the term of the research group, with the project "Istanbul Memo-ries. Personal narratives of the late Ottoman period" (www.istanbulmemories.org). The stimulating discussions at the Orient-Institut Istanbul centered around the multifaceted interplay between dress and person/personhood in written self-narratives or ego documents. By focusing on "Fashioning the Self in Transcul-tural Settings: The Uses and Significance of Dress in Self-Narratives," we hoped to supplement the existing research on self-narratives with the dimension of ma-terial culture. In the workshop light was shed on the potential of dress to shape identities, to express forms of affiliation or foreignness, as well as on vestimen-tary practices. Were clothes simply purchased to be worn, to possess, and to give away as a gift or in barter trade? During the presentations and discussions it be-came clear that new insights might be gleaned if one widens the focus in self-narratives, beyond material culture to include the consideration of other sources such as trousseau inventories or account books.

Richard Wittmann

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