FROM THE THEME EDITORS: Women Finding Their Voices- Kumru Berfin Emre Çetin, Emek Çaylı Rahte, Ayşe Nevin Yıldız Tahincioğlu (original) (raw)
Related papers
Negotiating: Gender and Sexual Identity in Contemporary Turkey., 2016
As Turkey struggles to define itself both at the international level and within the confines of its own borders, its women strive to negotiate an identity for the self in a continually changing homeland. Contemporary short stories such as Esmahan Aykol’s Bayan Naciye House, Muge Iplikci’s A Question and Mine Sogut’s Why I Killed Myself in Istanbul narrate the lives of women repetitively coerced to construct their selves within the confines of Islam, secularism and patriarchal tradition. Dismayed with Istanbul, they are often unable to protect their bodies, their honor and their rights to live their lives as they please. Uncertain with the roles that they may be allowed to play in the construction of the nation state, the female characters in these stories realize that owing to the complex national identity of their westernized/modernized Islamic Turkey it is not possible to ascribe to any single definition of the self. Yet attempts to embrace multiple identities prove challenging as the dominant social and political structures require these women to adopt modernity in theory only. Seen as transgressors, these women are often lonely. This paper examines the challenges, anxiety, dilemma, fear, sexual frustration, despair and lack of recognition suffered by Turkish women through the various rhetorical devices (such as anaphoras, rhetorical questions, dialogues between Istanbul—usually portrayed as a male lover—and the female narrator, uncertain endings, myth and fantasy) used by the different writers of these stories.
RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi , 2022
Having its roots in faiths such as Judaism and Christianity, the term ‘patriarchy’ refers to a system of authority in which males are regarded as superior to females and wield power over them. While some women have submissively internalized the patriarchal system, others have raised their voices and spoken out against it. Short stories written by women writers are one way to examine this system. However, there is a wide disparity in these authors' attitudes toward women. Some depict brave new women who transform and progress as the narrative goes on, while others feature stereotypical female figures who are submissive. The purpose of this paper is to compare the short stories written by Kate Chopin and Rose Tremain to those by Edith Wharton and Clare Boylan in order to determine whether or how much these authors criticize the patriarchal system. It is argued that Chopin and Tremain are the most critical of patriarchy, whereas Wharton and Boylan represent women within a patriarchal framework. Both Chopin and Tremain provide a comprehensive analysis of human nature, regardless of whether they are discussing men or women, with all of their complexity and inner struggles. Authors such as Wharton and Boylan, on the other hand, depict women in patriarchal societies in their natural state, without offering any solutions or suggestions. In their accounts, societal or sexual injustice is motivated by financial considerations.
“Katchar” Collection of Scientific Articles International Scientific-Educational Center NAS RA
The aim of the research is to examine the features of woman-subject’s [15, p. 900] self-representation, as well as the identification of the gender peculiarities of women’s literature in the poems of female authors who lived and worked in the Ottoman Empire in the second half of the 19th century. In the present study the poems are analysed in terms of the gender stereotypes of femininity and masculinity. The actuality of the paper is conditioned by the attempt and analysis of the subjective manifestations of consciousness of female authors and the problem of woman - subject - identity as a presence of writing. Such kind of analysis has been attempted for the first time. Generalizing the binary gender manifestations of femininity and masculinity, we notice that they are revealed through aesthetic images, are peculiar to the consciousness of female authors and are expressed through the poetics of their works. Therefore, these texts were viewed from two perspectives: a. expression of g...
'Women's Genre Writing: From Turkey to the Rest of the World'
2022
Translation is credited with breathing new life to texts, and giving voice to the voiceless. The work of women authors, however, remain bereft of new lives and new voices in the world's many languages. On the other hand, Olga Castro and Emek Ergun (2018: 132) point out that, 'what matters is not simply whether or not women writers get translated, but rather (a) which geopolitical, cultural and linguistic realities are believed to yield legitimate stories and truths worthy of translation, and (b) the political consequences of those literary flows that, more often than not, perpetuate "West-to-the-Rest narratives" (Costa 2006: 73), enforcing the hegemony of western values.'
Starting in the 1930’s, and within a new complex social framework, women attempt, by taking one step at a time, to leave their mark in society. Of course, one has to wait until the 1960’s to see women asserting their role in modern Turkish Literature and 30 years further in order to see prominent women politicians participating in high governmental offices. The Turkish women’s “identity” is resulted by their maturity in literature and also by their political and social awareness. The prominent women writers open the way to women in politics. The paper to be presented is an attempt to explore and argue on this significant turn in Turkish societal dynamics.
Aspasia, 2015
on occasion of its twenty-fourth anniversary, together with Yeditepe University organized the international symposium "Writing Women's Lives: Auto/Biography, Life Narratives, Myths and Historiography," which took place at Yeditepe University on 19-20 April 2014. The symposium coordinators were Birsen Talay Keşoğlu, Vehbi Baysan, and Şefi k Peksevgen, assisted by eleven more members of the Organizing Committ ee, including Aslı Davaz, director of the Istanbul Women's Library. 1 This symposium was extraordinarily successful. More than two hundred participants from all continents presented papers during forty-four (mostly parallel) sessions. The symposium was less Western dominated than any international women's history conference I have ever att ended, both with regard to the presenters and their topics.
This article proposes an analysis of the ways in which Turkish women are depicted in the memoirs of some women writers in the early 20th century. This period in history, which corresponds to one of the most important eras of the Turkish woman, was one of self-consciousness and cultural search. The analysis of the depiction of Turkish women by Turkish and foreigner women writers in that era is of utmost importance, since the discourses on women in Turkey were shaped in that way. This article analyses the portrayal of Turkish women in general and the social role of women in particular by taking the below given memoirs into account. Demetra Vaka Brown’s Haremlik: Some Pages from the Life of Turkish Women (1909), Hester Donaldson Jenkins’ Behind Turkish Lattices: The Story of a Turkish Woman's Life (1911), Zeyneb Hanoum’s A Turkish Woman's European Impressions (1913), Grace Ellison’s An English Woman in a Turkish Harem (1915), Selma Ekrem’s Unveiled: The Autobiography of a Turkish Girl (1930).