Transottomanica: Performing Cross-Border Contacts between Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire, 17th-19th Centuries

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The panel focuses on the performative aspects of cross-border communication in the “Transottoman” contact zone between Poland, the Habsburg and Russian Empires (resp. the latter´s predecessor, the Muscovite State) and the Ottoman Empire and its vassals from the 17th to end of the long 19th century. The case studies presented at this panel analyze practices of cultural translation, which constituted political cross-border relations and framed and embedded the circulation of goods and ideas. Covering the early modern period as well as the 19th century, the papers put such practices in a broader historical perspective. This way they encourage trans-epochal comparisons and a discussion of continuities and discontinuities between pre-modernity and modernity. Dealing with rituals of gift exchange, with practices of appropriating imported goods and with the performativity of texts transmitting circulating ideas, the contributions discuss in an interdisciplinary perspective the performativity of cross-border exchanges in the broadest sense.

Sub Unit

• Early Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, to 1800

Chair

• Stefan Rohdewald, U of Giessen (Germany)

Papers

• The Performance Counts: Gifting and Diplomatic Protocol in Muscovite-Crimean Tatar Relations (17th Century) - Arkadiusz Christoph Blaszczyk, U of Giessen (Germany)

• The Ottoman Tributaries Transylvania and Moldavia: Art Historical Reflections on the Mobility of Objects and Networks of Actors - Robert Born, Leibniz Inst for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (Germany)

• Staging Knowledge Circulation between the Habsburg and Russian Empires and the Ottoman World: Case Studies from the 18th and 19th Centuries - Dennis Dierks, U of Jena (Germany)

Discussants

• Stefan Rohdewald, U of Giessen (Germany)

• Sabine Jagodzinski, German Historical Institute in Warsaw (Poland)