Jamie Pelling

campus gothic buildings on Duke University's campus with a blossoming cherry tree in the middle

and getting a small dose of Spring at Duke University is a beautiful added bonus!

a photo of a brown notebook in late afternoon sun with the Feminist Theory Workshop on the cover

I really enjoy spending time with the community of scholars at the Feminist Theory Workshop!

I accidentally referred to Muhteşem Yüzyıl as a documentary in class this week..

my Ottoman cultural history seminar has filled up! I can't quite believe it!

thank you!

the cover of Gurpinar's "Ghoulyabani" showing the ghoul dressed in black with long white hair and dazzling eyes

I mean look at his beautiful eyes! I want him

just learned about Ghoulyabani, an evil creature as tall as a minaret, and might have to make late-Ottoman ghost stories my next research project

The dean of detainees, the oldest detainee in Syria, "Raghid Al-Tartari", who refused Hafez Al-Assad's orders to bomb #Hama in the eighties After 43 years of detention, he is free now
#Syria

Unimaginable.

The liberation of the women/children section of Sednaya prison. Cut off from the world, they’ve no idea what’s happened.

A man shouts: “You are all free now. Don’t be scared. Go home.”

“What happened?” a woman asks

“The Regime fell. You are free.”

#Syria 🇸🇾

(🎥Credit: Galyarahal)

(it is difficult to be hopeful given that so many of the likely outcomes do not end in freedom for Syria, but we should try)

it is beautiful watching Syrians free themselves and each other.

I remember talking with a soldier of the Free Syria Army in 2011 about his hopes for a post-Assad future and it is finally here

Optimist: the cup is half full

Pessimist: the cup is half empty

Ottomanist: is the cup a fincan or a bardak?

as an Ottomanist I think the one i return to over and over is Fatma Müge Göçek's "Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Demise of Empire". it's just bristling with ideas and sets out all the major themes in such a generative way

ooh this is tricky!! on the affect side of things, i think it's probably "Desire/Love" by Lauren Berlant chosen over the others just because it's an excellent intro to desire and how it is taken into other affective structures, including love

sometimes we are allowed a little Kemalism, as a treat

I was teaching the Sykes-Picot agreement today and had a student interrupt mid-lecture to say "but that's not what the Middle East actually looks like" and then I put up the next slide which was just a big picture of Mustafa Kemal smiling

can't wait to read this!

thanks for making the list!! I'd love to be added too!

I love imperial ignorances and also transliterating ج as "dsch"

a postcard celebrating the entry of the ottoman empire into ww1 and the declaration of global jihad. it shows the Austrian, German, and Ottoman emperors below a heading that says "The Fatwah" in German

I just taught the outbreak of the First World War and got to show my students this wild postcard documenting German orientalist brainworms

thanks for putting it together!! it's so helpful to find people

just a little self promo:

My dissertation "Feeling Like a State: Anxiety and Optimism in the late-Ottoman Empire" won the Malcolm H Kerr dissertation prize at MESA 2023.

I'm always anxious to talk about feelings, the state, modernity, and Lauren Berlant