Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, Professor and Chair
Department of Art History, University of Delaware

"Germanophiles and Germanophobes: French Archaeology in the Mediterranean after the Franco-Prussian war"

In Europe of the second half of the nineteenth century archaeology emerged as a complex field framed by competing cultural politics, national ideologies and imperialist ambitions carried out within the context of foreign archeological "schools" positioned in strategic outposts throughout the Mediterranean and the Near and Middle East. After the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, such rivalries were exacerbated. The paper is a case study of two members of the French School in Athens whose responses to the German "threat" took opposite directions: the anti-German nationalist Edmond About and the pro-German internationalist Salomon Reinach. Their reactions also typified diverse approaches to the "Greek ideal," challenged at the time by Schliemann's discoveries.



Doris Behrens-Abouseif
SOAS, University of London

"L.F. Cassas and the earliest panoramas of Cairo"

Unlike Istanbul, which has been frequently depicted in European panoramic views since the Renaissance, the earliest realistic panoramas of Cairo do not appear before the 18th century. My paper will deal with the work of Louis Francois Cassas, a French architect and artist, whose documentary pictures also earned him the reputation of archeologist. After visiting Italy, Flanders, Germany, the Netherlands, Istria and Dalmatia, which he documented in high quality drawings and engravings, Cassas, commissioned by the ambassador of Louis XVI, travelled in the Ottoman Empire, where he equally produced a significant opus of illustrations of Istanbul and Anatolian, Greek and Syrian sites, which he published in his Voyage Pittoresque de la Syrie, de la Phénicie, de la Palestine et de la Basse Egypte (1799). He visited Egypt in 1785 prior to the arrival of Napoleon’s Expedition. Besides his depiction of antiquities, his drawings of Islamic monuments in Alexandria and Cairo and his panoramas of Cairo, which are not well-known, are the earliest of their genre and are interesting in many respects; some of them are unique. My paper will focus on his views of Islamic architecture and his panoramas of Cairo.

Gülru Çakmak
Johns Hopkins University

"'Il a su trouver le drame tel qu’il existe:' Osman Hamdi’s Zeïbek à l’affût (1867) and the French History Painting Tradition"

In addition to his work as a museum director and archaeologist, with an oeuvre spanning forty years Osman Hamdi Bey was a prolific painter. Today, his paintings feature in major survey books on Orientalist painting, yet he is carefully classified as an “Eastern Orientalist.” Mainly known for his late work where he depicted Eastern-looking people in exotic settings, in canvases that have the finished look and polished surface of French Academic painting, this body of work continues to provoke opposing interpretations among art historians over a century after its production: was Hamdi an unoriginal adherent of Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), at whose studio in Paris he received his art training under the supervision of Gustave-Clarence-Rodolphe Boulanger, or were his paintings part of a strategy of resistance against European cultural and political hegemony, aimed at subverting stereotypes? In my paper, highlighting the impasse of such a dichotomous approach, I will instead offer to understand the Hamdi’s work in the context of the major artistic developments and critical debates of mid-century France. By focusing on an early work from 1867, I will bring to light the ambition of the young artist to produce a “modern history painting,” mindful of the work of Orientalist painters of the previous generation such as Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps and Gérôme, as well as the neo-classical history painting tradition of Jacques-Louis David and his school.

Zeynep Çelik
New Jersey Institute of Technology

"Defining Empire’s Patrimony: Ottoman Press and Antiquities"

By the late nineteenth century, the Ottoman attitude toward history had changed radically, appropriating all past layers of the empire’s territories. Developed in response to the European interest in antiquities, the new consciousness resulted, most prominently, in laws on antiquities, control over the work of European archaeologists, archaeological research by Ottoman teams, and the foundation of a museum in Istanbul. The rich heritage was capitalized upon to draw a modern imperial image with powerful foundations. My paper will examine this phenomenon through the Ottoman publications of the time. On the official level, I will look at salnames (yearbooks), which systematically recorded lists of asar-i atika (old works), situating them in their social and cultural contexts, giving information on constructional and technical issues, and describing their actual state. On the popular level, I will study general history books (such as Tarih-i Umuni of 1874) and periodicals (such as Servet-i Fünun), written and illustrated to appeal to a large readership.

Layla S. Diba
Independent Scholar

"Muhammad Ghaffari: The Persian Painter of Modern Life"

In the late 19th century, Qajar Iran, like its neighbor the Ottoman Empire, faced the dual challenges of Colonialism and Modernity. This paper will consider the role of art education and art production in its response to these forces, focusing on the leading court painter of the late Qajar period Muhammad Ghaffari, Kamal al-Mulk (1848-1941) whose career bridges the late Qajar period and the early 20th century. The Dar al-Funun (The Abode of Learning) Iran’s first institution of higher learning, was founded in 1851 on the orders of Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar (1848-96). From 1862 onwards, the school also functioned as an Academy of Art, whose curriculum was modeled on the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. The school produced a generation of painters trained in European easel painting techniques and genres, whose most outstanding graduate was Muhammad Ghaffari.

Early in his career, Ghaffari was recognized as the leading exponent of Academic painting, yet by the Constitutional period his art had evolved to a style representing contemporary Persian life, a style which was informed by nationalistic discourses current in intellectual and political circles. This paper’s consideration of the evolution of his style from a European Modernism to an authentic Iranian Modernism will include: Ghaffari’s training as a painter, the role of photography in the development of his style, his travel to Europe, and parallels with the art and career of the Ottoman painter Osman Hamdy.

Holly Edwards
Williams College

"Exiles, Diplomats and Darlings: Afghans Abroad in the early 20th century"

When Habibullah took the throne as Amir of Afghanistan (1901), one of his first acts was to grant amnesty to Mahmud Tarzi, exiled and living in the Ottoman sphere. Back in Kabul, Tarzi was a critical conduit of (Young Turk style) progressive thinking and his equally progressive daughter, Soraya, married Amanullah, soon to become king. Once enthroned, the King and Queen set out on a lengthy diplomatic tour in Dec. 1927. This paper concerns photographic evidence of this complex era, with particular emphasis on two stops on the ambassadorial tour—imperial England and republican Turkey. Along the way, effort will be made to articulate transcultural dynamics among the participating parties.

Edhem Eldem
Boğaziçi University, Istanbul

"Osman Hamdi Bey: Myths and Realities"

Exactly a century after his death, Osman Hamdi Bey (1842-1910) still attracts the attention of a number of scholars working on the wide spectrum of his scientific, cultural, and artistic endeavors. Yet all this interest is also responsible for a number of myths and assumptions concerning the nature and purpose of his contribution to late-Ottoman culture. This is particularly true of his artistic career, the analysis of which has often been based on a great deal of interpretation and speculation to make up for the weakness of documentary evidence. My paper will attempt to 'set the record straight,' by expanding this documentary basis to propose a systematic reassessment of Osman Hamdi Bey's artistic production, together with a critical analysis of the historiographical excesses to which it has been subjected to this day.

Emine Fetvaci
Boston University

"Between Modernity and Empire: The Art of Osman Hamdi"

Osman Hamdi’s copiously documented life and illustrious career as an artist, museologist and archaeologist demonstrate his layered identities, and bring to light some of his intellectual concerns that call for a contextualization of his oeuvre in discourses other than Orientalism. My paper suggests that Osman Hamdi’s work on the Vienna exposition of 1873 and the preoccupations demonstrated in the books prepared for it are central to understanding his painting career, and present a necessary supplement to the discussion of Orientalism. The interest in the applied arts and handcrafts displayed at Vienna is accompanied by a romantic view of traditional lives embodied by the Ottoman subjects living in the provinces. Hamdi’s paintings, which showcase traditional handcrafts and ethnic costumes, demonstrate an understanding of the non-Turkish ethnic groups of the empire as “pre-modern” and echo the sentiments of the westernized elites of the Ottoman Empire, bringing up issues of class and concepts of “empire” that call for a more nuanced reading of his oeuvre. The artist is clearly concerned with imperial and reformist ideas, and perhaps caught in between these two stances. These viewpoints are enhanced by an analysis of Hamdi’s museum and archaeology career.

Hamdi’s “Orientalist” paintings are deliberate constructions, using indigenous costumes to depict the “Orient” as frozen in the past. They use backgrounds that are very specific in their historicity, belonging to the fifteenth century for the most part. They appeal to a reality effect like Gerome, replicating details and textures, and featuring historical objects which anchor them even further in a distant place and time. This becomes even clearer when they are juxtaposed against paintings Hamdi made of his family members. The paintings evoke the Tanzimat period’s attempt to find the dynastic origins of the Ottomans in a pluralist past, to strengthen contemporary pursuits by appealing to a past. If Hamdi is entering into a dialogue with European artists depicting the Orient, he does so by presenting his own fiction: the world he depicts is no closer to the world he lives in than its depiction in Gerome’s paintings.



Susan Heuck-Allen
Smith College

"Problematic Protégés and Projects: Charles Eliot Norton’s Archaeological Diplomacy and the AIA’s Acquisition of Symbolic Capital"

Following the Civil War, America struggled to regain its national identity. Charles Eliot Norton encouraged the reunited states to identify with their classical roots and wanted US scholars to pursue archaeology and enter the Aegean arena. Following their unification in 1871, the Germans had forged a foreign policy of Kulturpolitik in which archaeology figured prominently in excavations at the sites of Olympia (1875) and Pergamum (1878). Meanwhile, the Austrians plumbed Samothrace (1873, 1875), France Delos, and the British Halicarnassus and Ephesus. Norton tried to secure Delphi, a site worthy of US aspirations, but his claim was contested. After the German Archaeological Institute’s semi-centennial in 1879, Norton’s nationalist agenda finally bore fruit in the founding of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) whose mission was “to encourage and aid the efforts of individual explorers and to send out special expeditions such as no individual could readily undertake.” So far, America had had “little share in the splendid work of rediscovery of the early civilizations of the Old World” and had “reaped but small benefit from it.” So Norton promoted the AIA as a national endeavor of great symbolic value. Norton sent his protégé Joseph Thacher Clarke to prospect at Assos, Sardis, Samos, and Samothrace and Wlliam Stillman to Crete. From 1878 to 1886, all but one of Norton’s planned projects at Delphi, Gortyn, Croton, Cyrene, and Assos failed. Of the AIA’s five Mediterranean expeditions, only Assos succeeded. There Norton and the AIA learned to practice archaeological diplomacy with the Ottoman Empire.



Renata Holod
University of Pennsylvania

"Westernization, Modernization and ‘Occidentalism’"

Brian Johnson
Independent Scholar

"A Traveler’s View of American Missionaries in Anatolia"

Western travelers to Anatolia in the 19th and early 20th centuries often encountered American missionaries on their journeys. Mission stations offered lodging, assistance, and familiar surroundings for visitors from abroad. Although traveler’s accounts of these institutions are generally cursory, they can provide insightful impressions of the missionaries and their establishments.

This paper focuses on the narrative of one traveler who stopped at several mission stations during a trek across central Turkey on the eve of the First World War. His description of these institutions illustrates the defining characteristics of the American missionary presence in Anatolia a century after its inception and at the brink of events that would alter it fundamentally in the coming decades.

Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet
University of Pennsylvania

"Unearthing the East: American Oriental Studies and Archeology in the Ottoman Empire"

This paper documents the origins of US-Ottoman relations in the nineteenth century through the rise of Oriental Studies and the emergence of American archeological surveys in the Ottoman Empire. As the American presence grew in the Middle East – first through the arrival of missionaries and later diplomats and academics – American travelers nurtured a romantic view of the region’s storied past. This appeal eventually gave rise to the birth of American archeology. American archeologists traveled to the Anatolian heartland, as well as to other regions that fell within the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire, in the late nineteenth century. These forays, while cultural in nature, nonetheless came to define American perceptions of the East. Most significantly, they created a bifurcation in the mind of American researchers between a romanticized ancient history and an inglorious contemporary culture. In this essay, I rely on the writings of American archeologists and linguists to contextualize these expeditions to the Ottoman Empire (focusing on the regions that constitute contemporary Iraq and Anatolia) within the broad context of American imperialism in the Middle East in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Nancy Micklewright
Getty Foundation

"Photography in the Service of Empire: Past and Present in Ottoman Photography"

Photography arrived in the Ottoman capital soon after its invention in 1839 and took hold immediately. Although some aspects of the rich and diverse photographic production of the Ottoman Empire are relatively well known, particularly the material intended for the tourist market, the vast extent of the Ottoman photographic record remains to be studied. This paper will construct an alternative history of Ottoman photography, related to but separate from an “Orientalist” photo history, which demonstrates the range and sophistication of the “official” photographic record of the Ottoman Empire.

Robert Ousterhout
University of Pennsylvania

"John Henry Haynes’s Travels and Photographs of Anatolia in 1884-87"

The career of archaeologist and photographer John Henry Haynes (1849-1910) is all but unknown today. After studying Classics at Williams College, he apparently grew bored with life as a high school principal and jumped ship in 1880 to join the first American archaeological expedition to the eastern Mediterranean. When his team was unable to obtain a permit to excavate on Crete, Haynes found himself in Athens, where he learned photography from W.J. Stillman as the latter prepared his second Acropolis folio. After that time, Haynes traveled with a camera, documenting his journeys through Anatolia, Syria, and Mesopotamia. Following his participation in the Assos excavations, 1881-83 (the first American venture in Classical archaeology), Haynes taught at Robert College in Constantinople and at the American mission school in Aintab (Gaziantep). He subsequently joined the Wolfe Expedition of 1884-1885, a reconnaissance mission to Mesopotamia, out of which grew the excavations at Nippur, which Haynes oversaw.

With the exception of select excavation photographs from Assos and Nippur, the work of Haynes is unknown. After years of isolation at Nippur, working under harsh and hostile conditions, Haynes’s accomplishments were discredited by the noted Babylonian scholar Hermann Hilprecht, who also claimed responsibility for Haynes’s discoveries. His career in shambles, Haynes succumbed to mental illness, ending his life in an asylum. He was, however, an accomplished and prolific photographer: several hundred unpublished photographs survive in the archives at Penn and Harvard, notably from journeys he took in 1884 and 1887 across Phrygia, Lycaonia, Cappadocia, and into Syria—the earliest photographs for the most of the inland sites. These are accompanied by journals recording his impressions of people and landscapes.

Heather Sharkey
University of Pennsylvania

"American Missionaries in the Ottoman Lands: Foundational Encounters"

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, American missionaries mediated U.S. relations with the Ottoman Empire, and helped to determine U.S. foreign policy towards the region. Missionaries presented examples of American culture to Ottoman peoples, just as they interpreted the region for Americans back home. They founded schools, publishing houses, hospitals, and other institutions, with legacies persisting today. American missionaries were so influential in this period because they represented the largest and most educated group of Americans abroad. Their engagements in the Ottoman and post-Ottoman Middle East raise larger questions about the consequences of American cultural projections into the wider world, and the reciprocal influences of these encounters on the United States and its peoples.

Ioli Vingopoulou, Ph.D
Institute for Neohellenic Research, The National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens, Greece

"Travelers to the Seven Churches of Asia Minor"

The travel to the Ottoman Empire by travelers from western Europe had political, ideological, religious or personal aims. From the 17th century onwards, certain travellers and their texts defined the routes of the ones that followed. At the same period started the pilgrimage to the “Seven Churches of the Apocalypse”. These texts combine the quest for the Greco-Roman past with a particular interest in the Christian monuments. During the 18th century the seven cities mentioned in the Apocalypse are not part of a systematic itinerary followed by travelers. Only during the last one hundred and fifty years of the Ottoman Empire did some travelers travel to Asia Minor in order to visit the cities mentioned in the Christian eschatological text exclusively. The sketches, the engravings and the photos along with their descriptions constitute a little studied but nonetheless interesting chapter of the 19th century travel literature.

Bonna D. Wescoat
Emory University

"'The most perfect idea of a Greek city that any where exists'
Assos, Archaeologists, and Ideologies"

In the spring of 1800, the young and intrepid William Martin Leake journeyed the coast of Asia Minor, stopping at the ancient citadel of Assos. His brief but evocative description captures the essence of the place in its opening and closing remarks: “The ruins are extremely curious,” and “the whole gives, perhaps, the most perfect idea of a Greek city that any where exists.” This oscillation between the novel and the paradigmatic goes straight to the heart of why Assos captured the attention of 19th century travelers and why it became the first site of excavations of the Archaeological Institute of America in 1881-83. In this paper, I aim to explore not only the challenges and accomplishments of the early American investigators at Assos, but also to probe how some of the underlying theoretical, ideological, and political concerns that motivated their actions and drove their enterprise have pursued us into the 21st century. In conclusion, I reflect upon the way in which a paragon of the American mission—a moonlit journey up Mt Ida—had unanticipated yet profound consequences for American history, in the creation of the Lincoln Memorial, visual backdrop of the American Civil Rights Movement.