Uncoupling Language And Religion

This book is an invitation to rethink our understanding of Turkish literature as a tale of two “others.” The first part of the book examines the contributions of non-Muslim authors, the “others” of modern Turkey, to the development of Turkish literature during the late Ottoman and early republican period, focusing on the works of largely forgotten authors. The second part discusses Turkey as the “other” of the West and the way authors writing in Turkish challenged orientalist representations. Thus this book prepares the ground for a history of literature which uncouples language and religion and recreates the spaces of dialogue and exchange that have existed in late Ottoman Turkey between members of various ethno-religious communities.

This book offers various perspectives on inclusive and exclusive societies and the factors involving categorization of people in dystopic and utopic novels and poems, with a particular emphasis on religion. The theme is tackled from different points of views by the various authors, whose contributions focus on American, British, European, and Eastern literature. As such, the book will be of interest to scholars and students of comparative literature, American literature, and British literature, and those who study religion or a variety of interdisciplinary subjects.

Rabbi Samuel Hirsch (Thalfang 1815 – Chicago 1889) was instrumental in the development of Reform Judaism in Europe and the USA. This volume is the first lengthy publication devoted to this striking personality whose significance was no less than that of his contemporaries Abraham Geiger and David Einhorn. En route from Thalfang via Dessau and Luxembourg to Philadelphia, Hirsch left his mark on societal, religious, and philosophical developments in manifold ways. By the time he was appointed Chief Rabbi of the Jewish community in Luxembourg in 1843, he had already written many of his most important works on the philosophy of religion. In them he engaged in debate with the Young Hegelians on the importance of Judaism, the religion that, more than any other, enabled the human actualization of freedom so central to Hegel’s philosophy. Over time Hirsch took an increasingly radical stance on issues such as Jewish rituals and mixed marriage. The goal of his reforms was not assimilation. He strove to strengthen Judaism to meet the demands of modernity and enable its survival in the modern era. Hirsch’s story is key to understanding the transnational history of Reform Judaism and the struggle of Jews to secure a place in history and society.

Love has been an important trope in the literature of the region we now call the Middle East, from ancient times to modern. This book analyses love poetry in various ancient and contemporary languages of the Middle East, including Akkadian, ancient Egyptian, Classical and Modern Standard Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Turkish and Kurdish, including literary materials that have been discovered and highlighted for the first time. Together, the chapters reflect and explore the discursive evolution of the theme of love, and the sensibilities, styles and techniques used to convey it. They chart the way in which poems in ancient poetry give way to complex and varied reflections of human sentiments in the medieval languages and on to the modern period which in turn reflects the complexities and nuances of present times. Offering a snapshot of the diverse literary languages and their relationship to the theme of love, the book will be of interest to scholars of Near and Middle Eastern Literature and Culture.

Religion, Language and Power shows that the language of ‘religion’ is far from neutral, and that the packaging and naming of what English speakers call ‘religious’ groups or identities is imbued with the play of power. Religious Studies has all too often served to amplify voices from other centers of power, whether scripturalist or otherwise normative and dominant. This book’s de-centering of English classifications goes beyond the remit of most postcolonial studies in that it explores the classifications used in a range of languages — including Arabic, Sanskrit, Chinese, Greek and English — to achieve a comparative survey of the roles of language and power in the making of ‘religion’ . In contextualizing these uses of language, the ten contributors explore how labels are either imposed or emerge interactively through discursive struggles between dominant and marginal groups. In dealing with the interplay of religion, language and power, there is no other book with the breadth of this volume.

It would not be an overstatement to say that Cemal Kafadar has transformed the field of Ottoman history. As a result of his pathbreaking books and articles, the field is experiencing a turn within itself as well as recasting its relationship with world history. This volume acts as a tribute to Kafadar and the important interdisciplinary work he has both done and inspired in the field. In line with the intellectual pluralism that Kafadar has cultivated over his career, readers will find a number of articles engaging with a wide range of questions, approaches, perspectives, and sources across Ottoman history. Kafadar's students and friends, individually or in pairs, researched and crafted contributions to this volume with a variety of conceptual premises, theoretical approaches, and interpretive tools to celebrate his thirty years of teaching, research, and mentorship, in addition to the overwhelming generosity of his intellectual and personal engagement.

A comprehensive, readable history of the Republic of Turkey that gives equal weight to all periods in the first century of the Republic of Turkey. The republican order of Turkey seems not to have changed much since its foundation in 1923, but there were dramatic transformations: From Atatürk’s modernization dictatorship in the 1920s and 1930s, over the massive migration into the cities and the military coups in the second half of the twentieth century, up to Recep Tayyip Erdoğans electoral autocracy since the 2010s. This book makes us understand Turkey’s historical trajectory in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the fate of its various communities and ethnic groups—in particular Alevis and Kurds—and argues that a particular trait of Turkish political culture is its constant fluctuation between confidence and contention, grandeur and grievance.