Dr. Nazan Maksudyan | Researcher
Home Institution
:
Freie Universität Berlin
|
Position
:
Einstein Guest Professor
|
Disciplines
:
History
|
Biography
Nazan Maksudyan is currently an Einstein guest professor at the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut at the Freie Universität Berlin and a research associate at the Centre Marc Bloch (Berlin). Her research mainly focuses on the history of children and youth in the Ottoman Empire during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with special interest in gender, sexuality, education, humanitarianism, and non-Muslims. Among her publications are Ottoman Children & Youth During World War I (2019), “Control over Life, Control over Body: Female Suicide in Early Republican Turkey” (2016), Orphans and Destitute Children in the Late Ottoman Empire (2014), Women and the City, Women in the City (ed., 2014), Ottoman Children and Youth during WW1 (2019), Urban Neighborhood Formations (ed. with Hilal Alkan, 2020).
Soundscapes of Late Ottoman Cities
My project is a comparative social and cultural history of the soundscapes of late Ottoman cities. The aim is to configure the sensory and subjective aspects of sounds. I intend to give a sense as to how Ottoman soundscapes were shaped by the over present sound of the Muslim call to prayer, but also to a certain extent by the sounds other religions, by street vendors who dominated the street life with their commercial activities, by dogs, by fires and firefighters, and certainly by the new infrastructural and communication technologies of train, tram, telegraph, and steamship in the turn of the century. The research also extends to the criticisms and awareness of certain segments of the society regarding noise and anti-noise regulations. The project is particularly interested in the implications of gender, class, ethnicity, religion, and human-animal encounters in shaping the sonic lives of the cities.