Based on ethnographic fieldwork, textual analysis, and data culled from interviews, this manuscript explores how Islamic ethics shape the epistemic approaches of Muslim intellectuals to liberal democracy and corollary paradigms of western modernity. Specifically, it examines a c…
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This thesis examines the role of popular dancers in Egyptian cinema of the late 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, while deliberating the capacity of certain dancers to achieve a level of esteem over the course of their careers and in their film roles. Films that feature the prominen…
This dissertation offers a new perspective on the emergence and development of the Turkish novel from the 1880s to the 1970s, through an intellectual and social-historical investigation of the role of reason and rationality in the Turkish modernization project. Starting with the…
In the post 9/11 era, international interest in modernizing Muslim societies reinvigorated the focus on Muslim women as the indicator of progress. In this narrative of progress, the Western and Muslim states as well as the international development agencies highlight women's edu…
Shortly before his death in 2001, W.G. Sebald made what amounts to a mission statement for his literary endeavors under the title "Ein Versuch der Restitution. (An Attempt at Restitution). In this brief address, Sebald maintains that his work can be seen as an attempt to make am…
My dissertation, entitled “Examining the Life of Oyabe Zen'ichirō: The New Formation of Modern Japanese Identity at the Turn of the Twentieth Century” reconstructs the life history of Oyabe Zen'ichirō (1867-1941) and examines the formation of his Japanese identity within interna…
Sufi orders became increasingly widespread in Egyptian society from the 12th century to the 19th, despite criticism directed particularly to ritual performance. But with the advent of modernity, various social transformations began to undermine the orders' traditional bases for …
The dissertation is an analysis of the Russian relationship to Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire during the second half of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. As a methodological approach, it uses the concepts of irredentism, Orientalism, and multi…
Early Ottoman dance practices that took place in gender segregated spaces and allowed for a certain degree of sexual explicitness and expressions of homoerotic desire were disavowed among Turkish elites in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. "Belly dance" became associated …
The second half of the twentieth century was a period of rapid urbanization in Istanbul. During this time, the city witnessed the development of a consumer society, the expansion and cultural ascendancy of the middle class, and the development of modern techniques of image mass …
This dissertation examines five novels and three films inscribed in or related to the Mexican detective genre and centered on death and nationalism: Ensayo de un crimen (1944) by Rodolfo Usigli, El hombre sin rostro (1950) by Juan Bustillo Oro, Ensayo de un crimen (1955) by Luis…
This dissertation approaches the question of modernity in two ways. The first treats the dynamics of exchange between history and literature with reference to the question of representation as it intersects with modernity, the emergence of literary modernism, and Third World nat…
My dissertation is an exploration of the Nizamiye court system during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Though one of the more ambitious state projects launched in the framework of the Tanzimat reforms, the Nizamiye judicial system stands out as an understudied cha…
Political conflict erupted after the fall of the Soviet Union instead of the convergent world that was anticipated. Responding in part to protests and ethnic strife after the Cold War, authors predicted breakdowns in prevailing power arrangements--particularly the nation-state. …
Since the 1960s African Americans, Latinos, and Caucasian Americans have been traveling abroad to Africa, South America, Haiti, and the Caribbean Islands, in search of connections to African roots. Along the way many have turned to and accepted alternative forms of religious pra…
Developments in world politics and culture in the inter war and post war years, especially the rise of the anti-colonial nationalist movements in Africa, provide an important background to the rise of African cultural modernity and the emergence of modern African literature. Mod…
A growing body of literature is reexamining the colonial period with an eye to understanding the ambiguity of categories of colonizer and colonized. Those persons of ambiguous status who benefited from power and success in the colonial era but were left behind in decolonization …
Cities disfigured by war face not only the scares and memories of such violence among remaining populations, but the urban field itself serves as a constant concretized memory or evidence of atrocity. Urban design strategies are not simply attempts at representing modernity in t…
This doctoral research thesis aims to provide a comprehensive depiction of contemporary spiritual engagement outside of religious tradition. Existing research is primarily contextualized within the areas of sociology and religious studies, and an in-depth psychological evaluatio…