1. Strengthening Male Bodies and Building Robust Communities: Physical Culture in the Late Ottoman Empire
- Author
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Yildiz, Murat Cihan, Gelvin, James L1, Yildiz, Murat Cihan, Yildiz, Murat Cihan, Gelvin, James L1, and Yildiz, Murat Cihan
- Abstract
This dissertation examines the making of modernity in the late Ottoman Empire by tracing the connections between sports, the body, male subject formation, nation building, and communal and imperial identity. It focuses on the development of a shared Ottoman physical culture amongst upper and middle-class Muslim, Christian, and Jewish men of Istanbul from the 1870s until World War I. My research draws from a diverse array of archives and primary sources written in Ottoman-Turkish, Armenian, Armeno-Turkish, French, English, German, and Greek, such as government reports and documents, school and association records, private correspondence, periodicals, books, and pamphlets, as well as vernacular photographs, in order to present an alternative understanding of cultural transformations and the historical linkages between different ethno-religious communities of the late Ottoman Empire. The central argument of this dissertation is that Muslims, Christians, and Jews of Istanbul engaged sports as a shared civic activity that offered benefits for the individual, community, and empire. This study investigates how Ottoman physical culture was underpinned by novel understandings of the body and implicated in larger debates and processes concerning the self, gender, ethno-religious communal identity, and the nation by pursuing three principle areas of inquiry. The first area of focus is the institutionalization of Ottoman physical culture in schools, voluntary associations, and government ministries. The study begins by exploring the development of athleticism as an educational ideology in a government lycée, Mekteb-i Sultani, and a foreign missionary school, Robert College. It demonstrates that many of the leading physical culture enthusiasts first encountered discussions about the educational significance of exercise and corporeal development as students in these two schools, and went on to establish voluntary athletic associations, as private spaces, in which young men formed
- Published
- 2015