Love Poems of an Ottoman Woman | Didem Havlioğlu

E357 | What did it mean to be a woman in the intellectual world of early modern Islamic empires? In this episode, our guest Didem Havlioğlu offers one answer to this question through the life and works of Mihrî Hatun, an Ottoman woman from 15th-century Amasya whose poetry survives to this day. Mihrî was unique within the male-dominated sphere of early modern love poetry, and as we discuss in this podcast, her position as a woman was integral to her poetry and its meaning. These poems and the relationships of this exceptional writer are the subject of Havlioğlu's new book entitled Mihrî Hatun: Performance, Gender-Bending, and Subversion in Ottoman Intellectual History (Syracuse University Press). More at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2018/04/mihri-hatun.html Didem Havlioğlu is a Lecturing Fellow in the Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University. She is an Ottomanist working on women and gender in Ottoman intellectual history. She is interested in the making of intellectual culture and discursive construction of gender through time and space, in particular the history of women’s writing. Havlioglu holds a doctoral degree from the University of Washington. Chris Gratien is Assistant Professor of History at University of Virginia, where he teaches classes on global environmental history and the Middle East. He is currently preparing a monograph about the environmental history of the Cilicia region of the former Ottoman Empire from the 1850s until the 1950s. CREDITS Episode No. 357 Release Date: 12 April 2018 Recording Location: University of Virginia Special thanks to the University of Virginia Corcoran Department of History for supporting the production of this episode Audio editing by Chris Gratien Music: Katibim (Uskudar'a Gider iken) - Safiye Ayla Special thanks to Mutelif for "Samsa"; Sato Moughalian for "Kamancha"; and Kara Günes for "Istanbul" Bibliography and lyrics courtesy of Didem Havlioğlu available at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2018/04/mihri-hatun.html