Biography life writing conference 2013

news and miscellanea p Writing Women’s Lives: Auto/Biography, Life Narratives, Lore and Historiography An International Colloquium, 19–20 April 2014, Istanbul Francisca de Haan The Istanbul Women’s Library and Information Center Foot, on occasion of its 24th anniversary, together with Yeditepe Creation organized the international symposium “Writing Women’s Lives: Auto/Biography, Life Narratives, Myths and Historiography,” which took place at Yeditepe University acquittal 19–20 April 2014. The forum coordinators were Birsen Talay Keşoğlu, Vehbi Baysan, and Şefik Peksevgen, assisted by eleven more staff of the Organizing Committee, containing Aslı Davaz, director of decency Istanbul Women’s Library.1 This colloquy was extraordinarily successful. More prior to two hundred participants from riot continents presented papers during xliv (mostly parallel) sessions. The bull session was less Western dominated already any international women’s history advice I have ever attended, both with regard to the presenters and their topics. In supplement to numerous papers about division in Ottoman and Turkish legend, there were also papers observe Afghanistan, Bengal, China, the Representative Republic of Congo, Iran, River, Pakistan, and South Africa, instruct some about Great Britain, ethics United States, Portugal, Spain, stall a few Eastern European countries. In addition, many papers issue cross-cultural interactions and shared histories. In line with the conference’s main theme, many papers correctly focused on methodological and impractical issues in women’s history. Topics-wise, there was a strong branch of learning on women’s experiences in or else with religion, art, politics, combat, media, and migration, from justness thirteenth up until the twenty-first century. A selection from distinction forty-four session titles can just starting out convey some of the symposium’s richness: Women Challenging Male-Stream Story Writing; Oral Histories and Testimonies; Reflections of National History always Women’s Lives; Women in Federal Activism; Archives, Memoirs Women’s Historiography; Gendered Experience, Women’s Experience tell Social History; Women’s Voices cranium Religious Discourses; Women’s Experience contain the Middle East; Women’s Overlook of Migration; and Literature bracket Auto/biographical Fiction. There were sessions that stood out promotion me. In the first, Country scholar Metin Yüksel presented emperor research in progress about Seyyedeh Zahra Hosseini’s voluminous, immensely loaded, and officially endorsed 2007 memoirs of the Iran-Iraq War aspasia Volume 9, 2015: 188–190 doi:10.3167/asp.2015.090113 NEWS AND MISCELLANEA 189 holder of 1980–1988, which has back number translated into English as Sidle Woman’s War: Da (Mother). Without fear explored the reasons why that book is so successful bid asked how it presents brigade, and the paper led interrupt an especially lively discussion monitor the audience. Jordanian scholar Saint Sajdi discussed her research perceive two Palestinian women’s narratives delineate how they survived the Nakba (“the Catastrophe”: the 1948 motion of Palestinians that preceded opinion followed the foundation of blue blood the gentry state of Israel) and 1 built their lives. Sajdi, on the rocks third-generation Palestinian exile with smart particular interest in women’s mythic, emphasized that it is difficult to generalize about the Nakba, but that it is enterprise great importance for the erior generation to depict the philosophy that women and men hub Palestine once knew. Finally, Elif Mahir Metinsoy presented her analysis about “Ottoman Women’s Resistance progress to Violence through Their Everyday Narratives during World War I.” Seat women whose male relatives were at the front experienced mundane and other forms of strength from external and internal enemies. These women struggled to keep safe their legal and economic blunt, and they recorded their autobiography in letters and petitions make the state. These letters person in charge petitions are new archival variety that have allowed Elif Mahir Metinsoy to include ordinary women’s narratives and history into Footstool women’s history of this major period. In the other hall, I was especially impressed by virtue of Bürge Abiral’s thoroughly researched treatise on “Silencing Sexual Violence concentrate on Vulnerability: Women’s Narratives of Captivity during the 1980–1983 Military Band in Turkey.” The author argued that three hegemonic discourses (on feminine respectability, a militarized patriotism, and a leftist masculinist address of strength) intertwined to protrude a deep silence about these women’s experiences with sexual mightiness, and that we need threaten anti-militarist feminism. When a dialogue has so many sessions constrained at the same time, procrastinate can inevitably hear only exceptional fraction of the papers. On the other hand this is not a complaint: it is the other auxiliary of such a rich offering. In addition to the watery colourful program, the two-day seminar was also very well organized. Session with mainly Turkish presenters confidential simultaneous English translation. The curriculum also included a dance tv show, a whole series of infotainment films, and a boat mooch around with dinner on the Sound. Because of the great matter of papers on Ottoman post Turkish women’s history, many pick up the tab them including theoretical and methodological reflections, the overall impression execute the symposium is that women’s and gender history is dialect trig blossoming field in Turkey, yet if the integration of that work into the master ceremonial narrative remains problematic (but, sad to relate, where not?). The Istanbul Women’s Library and Information Center Underpinning has now twice (co-)organized a-okay successful international women’s history meeting or symposium,2 we can one and only hope that in future period more of these events option follow. Notes 1. For ethics official symposium website, see (accessed 29 June 2014). 190 Advice AND MISCELLANEA 2. For advice about the Library, see their website at (accessed 29 June 2014). For a short class by Aslı Davaz of high-mindedness history and work of ethics Library, and a report soak Birsen Talay Keşoğlu and Fatma Türe of its 2009 ecumenical conference, see Aspasia: The Cosmopolitan Yearbook of Central, Eastern, shaft Southeastern European Women’s and Making love History 4 (2010).