Americans in Istanbul

Class Description

This course explores how Americans were changed—sometimes radically—by their experiences in Istanbul from the nineteenth century onward. Drawn by dreams of conversion, adventure, or escape, they often encountered a city and culture that upended their expectations. Through personal narratives, historical documents, and literature, we’ll examine stories of disillusionment, adaptation, and transformation. We’ll follow American women missionaries whose work intersected with emerging feminist movements in the Ottoman Empire; we’ll read American eyewitness accounts of the Armenian genocide and the long arc of US responses to these atrocities; and we’ll join writer James Baldwin during his decade in 1960s Istanbul, where he found a measure of freedom from American racism and homophobia. We’ll consider how these individual journeys intersected with major historical shifts, from the Ottoman Empire’s final decades to the rise of modern Turkey. We end in the twenty-first century with a contemporary novel about an Armenian American woman’s return to Istanbul, highlighting how personal and political histories remain entangled.

Dr. Carolyn Goffman’s work on Americans in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire intersects with her interests in women in higher education, colonial systems of education, and Western representations of Muslim women. She has lived, taught, and researched in Istanbul.

What to Expect

Format: In Person

Class Capacity: 12

Class Style: Mostly discussion; participation-based

Materials List

Required

• Elif Shafak, The Bastard of Istanbul. Penguin, 2007. ISBN: 9780143112716
• Digital Course Packet

First Reading

For our first day of class, please read these chapters from our Course Packet:

• Mary Mills Patrick, Under Five Sultans. New York: Century, 1929. Chapter 1 (“Traveling in the Seventies,” (16 pages) and Chapter 4 (“Humanity in the Making,” 13 pages)

A Brief Syllabus

1. Missionary Wives and the Limits of Conversion
2. Mary Mills Patrick and the Making of a Women’s College
3. War, Genocide, and the Birth of the Turkish Republic
4. James Baldwin, Exile, and the Search for Home
5. Memory, Identity, and Istanbul Today

Cost and Registration

5 Sessions, $200 ($180 for Newberry members, seniors, and students). Learn about becoming a member.

We offer our classes at three different price options: Regular ($200), Community Supported ($185), and Sponsor ($215). Following the models of other institutions, we want to ensure that our classes are accessible to a wider audience while continuing to support our instructors. You may choose the price that best fits your situation when registering through Learning Stream.

To register multiple people for this class, please go through the course calendar in Learning Stream, our registration platform. When you select the course and register, you’ll be prompted to add another registrant.

Take a Look

View our full schedule of adult education classes.

Support the Newberry

Your generosity is vital in keeping the library’s programs, exhibitions, and reading rooms free and accessible to everyone.

Questions?

Call us at (312) 255-3700 or send us an email at adulteducation@newberry.org.

We are in office Tuesday through Thursday, 10 am–6 pm CT.
We are available by email Tuesday through Saturday.