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School of Anthropology and School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies (MENAS), University of Arizona
The ITS Dissertation Writing Grant will help me achieve the successful publication of several academic articles and timely completion of my dissertation, "Becoming Roma: Gypsy Identity and Civic Engagement in Turkey." Economic and political shifts in Turkey resulting from ongoing liberalizing reforms are producing major social changes, observable in the pluralization of cultural identities, urban development, and the proliferation of non-governmental organizations. My research analyzes the effects of these processes on identity and citizenship for Turkey's Roma (Gypsies). While the changes resulting from liberalization are typically posed as either positive or negative, the advantages and disadvantages for the Roma are simultaneously produced and mutually constitutive. While they are being integrated into the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, they are also facing the dissolution of their communities, traditional occupations, and cultural life. These contradictions and ambiguities have broad implications as Turkey is increasingly lauded as a model for democracy in the Middle East. |
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The Department of Art History, University of California, Los Angeles
Sarah-Neel Smith is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on the intersection of art and politics in Turkey in the post-war period - specifically, the ways that local art spaces and art criticism dovetailed with international discourses about democracy after WWII. She writes regularly for Bidoun at Frieze. |
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Department of Geography, University of California Los Angeles
My research focuses on the İstanbul neighborhood of Eyüp and explores various processes through which Eyüp has been fashioned into a place rich in social, cultural, and religious meaning. Looking particularly at the relationship between people and the material environments in which they live, I follow the institutions, individuals, and ideas who come together to make Eyüp meaningful. This Dissertation Writing Grant from the Institute of Turkish Studies will provide important support for me as I begin the process of revising my fieldwork and archival research. |
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Department of History, University of Iowa
Brian JK Miller is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of Iowa. In 2013, Brian JK Miller completed archival and anthropological field work in Turkey (15 months) and Germany (5 months) through the support of the Institute for International Education (IIE), the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), and the University of Iowa. With funding from the Institute of Turkish Studies, he is currently writing his dissertation entitled "Reshaping the Turkish Nation-State: Migrant Communities in Western Europe and Return Migration, 1959-1985." His research investigates how economic migrants, whether temporarily or permanently residing outside of Turkey, had a dramatic influence on Turkish identity, identity politics and development strategies of the Turkish State in the 1960s-1980s. His work also investigates how Cold War-era international advisory policies ultimately prompted the development of unintended transnational communities that, over time, gained increasing social and cultural capital in both sending and receiving societies. |
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Department of History, University of California Los Angeles
Murat Yıldız is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at UCLA. His dissertation, "Strengthening, Training, and Preparing the Sons of the Nation(s): Physical Culture in Late Ottoman İstanbul," investigates a shared physical culture among late Ottoman İstanbul's diverse ethno-religious groups. It presents a multilingual and cross-cultural analysis of the coeval development of civic and ethno-religious (Muslim, Christian, and Jewish) bonds in the late Ottoman Empire. The Dissertation Writing Grant from the Institute of Turkish Studies will enable him to concentrate on completing his dissertation. |
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Middle East History, Columbia University
Dale Stahl is a Ph.D. candidate in Middle East history at Columbia University. His research focuses on the connections between environmental change and governance in the modern era. At present, he is working on an environmental history of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the twentieth century. With the support of the Institute of Turkish Studies, he will complete the writing of this dissertation, entitled "The Two Rivers: Water, Development and Politics in the Tigris-Euphrates Basin, 1920-1975," and defend in April 2014. |
