Book presentation: Quest for the homeland. The Turkish Cypriot opposition during the 1964-2004 period (in Greek), 26/10
October 18, 2022
Χαιρετισμός Πρύτανη κατά την Παρουσίαση του Βιβλίου “Διεκδικώντας την Πατρίδα. Η Τουρκοκυπριακή αντιπολίτευση την περίοδο 1964-2004” του Λέκτορα Νίκου Μούδουρου
October 27, 2022
The Turkish and Middle Eastern Studies Department
Invites you to the lecture: “Of Books and Buddhas: Turkish Writers and the Religions of the Other Asia”
Speaker:
Laurent Mignon
Professor, University of Oxford
Abstract:
At the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century, an increased interest in India and East Asia can be witnessed in Ottoman Turkey. While the recent focus of scholars has mainly been on the geopolitical significance of this development, the literary and religious dimensions of the intellectual encounter with the other Asia have rarely been investigated, unless they were in connection to Islam. However, the study of literary and autobiographical writings of the first half of the twentieth century reveals that authors as different as the novelist Halide Edip [Adıvar] (1884-1964) and the poet Asaf Halet Çelebi (1907-1958) have engaged with and even adopted aspects of the teachings of non-Abrahamic religions. Some of their writings introduce the readers to Buddhism and Neo-Hinduism and are indicative of important aspects of the changing religious landscape of the reading classes in Ottoman and republican Turkey. They are a reminder of the wealth of intellectual, literary, and religious experiences in the lands known today as Turkey, experiences that are too often obscured by a reduction of Turkish religious and intellectual history to a conflict between Islam and secularism.
Biography
Laurent Mignon is Professor of Turkish Literature at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of St Antony’s College and Affiliate Professor at the Luxembourg School of Religion and Society. His research focuses on the minor literatures of Ottoman and Republican Turkey, in particular Jewish literatures, as well as the literary engagement with non-Abrahamic religions during the era straddling the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic. He is the author of, among others, Ana Metne Taşınan Dipnotlar: Türk Edebiyatı ve Kültürlerarasılık Üzerine Yazılar [Footnotes Moving to the Main Text: Writings on Turkish Literature and Interculturalism] (Istanbul, 2009), Hüzünlü Özgürlük: Yahudi Edebiyatı ve Düşüncesi Üzerine Yazılar [A Sad State of Freedom: Writings on Jewish Literature and Thought] (Istanbul, 2014) and Uncoupling Language and Religion: An Exploration into the Margins of Turkish Literature (Boston, 2021).
TUESDAY 8 NOVEMBER 2022
TIME: 19:00
ROOM: LRC 014
NEW CAMPUS (LIBRARY BUILDING)
1 Panepistimiou Avenue
2109 Aglantzia, Nicosia
