Hosted by: Dr. Ümit Kurt and Dr. Dotan Halevy
Polonsky Academy Fellows at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
A century before the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), a passionate discourse emerged in the Ottoman Empire, rebutting politicized Western representations of the East. Ottoman and early Turkish Republican intellectuals, well acquainted with the European political and cultural scene and charged with their own ideological agendas, deconstructed tired clichés about “the Orient.” In her new book, Zeynep Çelik recontextualizes Eurocentric studies, unearthing an important episode in modern Middle Eastern intellectual history and curating a selection of primary texts illustrating the debates.
Zeynep Çelik is Sakip Sabanci Visiting Professor at Columbia University and distinguished professor emerita at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.