Courses

“Imag(in)ing the Ottoman Empire: A visual history, 18th-20th centuries” is an undergraduate/graduate seminar focusing on visual representations of the Ottoman Empire during the last two centuries of its existence, from the early eighteenth to the early twentieth century. The objective is to study the development of visual representations both by and about the Empire, from Ottoman miniatures to early European paintings, and from the surge of Western illustrated magazines to the local uses of photography. The seminar’s chronological thread will be complemented by a thematic structure designed to explore different aspects and influences concerning the production and diffusion of images: curiosity, documentation, exoticism, propaganda, orientalism, modernity, self-fashioning, eroticism, policing, to name just a few.