Cosmopolis, Islampolis: Late Ottoman Urbanism Between Myth, Memory and Post-Modernity
by Dr. Ariel Salzmann

Today, Istanbul is Europe’s largest city with Turkish and Kurdish-speaking Muslims making up the overwhelming majority of its nearly 14 million inhabitants. But for more than a millennium and a half, a plurality of its citizens were Greek, Armenian and Jewish. Although the founders of the Turkish Republic, who situated the new national capital in the Anatolian interior, sought to distance themselves from this multi-religious and imperial urbanism, over the last decades, large scale internal migration and the ruling Justice and Development Party have shifted the gravitational centre of Turkish culture, politics and economics from Ankara to Istanbul.

This talk explores how new media, changing demography, struggles for human rights, and post-modern identities challenge the historical reconstruction of the late Ottoman Empire’s shared, urban past.

Dr. Ariel Salzmann is an Associate Professor of Islamic and World History at Queen’s University.  Her scholarship focuses on Ottoman Studies.

Date: Saturday September 29, 2012
Time: 3:00 – 5:00 pm
Location: Auditorium, Noor Cultural Centre
Admission: $5