On 3 May 1810 George Gordon, Lord Byron, swam like the mythic Leander from Sestos on the European side of the Hellespont to Abydos on the Asian shore. The hero of his poem "Don Juan" has lived in “feminine disguise” in the sultan's harem for more than a century. To commemorate Byron's Don Juan, the third volume of the "Ottoman Empire and European Theatre" series focuses on the image of the harem in literature and theatre. Nineteen international contributors explore historical conceptions of the Ottoman harem and seraglio in British, French and South East European sources from the late seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Contributions by Jennifer L. Airey, Gönül Bakay, Michael Chappell, Anne Greenfield, Isobel Grundy, Bent Holm, Michael Hüttler, Hans Peter Kellner, Emily M. N. Kugler, Andreas Münzmay, Domenica Newell-Amato, Walter Puchner, Marian Gilbart Read, Käthe Springer, Stefanie Steiner, Laura Tunbridge, Himmet Umunc, Hans Ernst Weidinger, Mi Zhou.

The book series “Ottomania” researches cultural transfers between the Ottoman Empire and Europe, with the performing arts as its focus. In Ottoman Empire and European Theatre, vol. IV: Seraglios in Theatre, Music and Literature, the series continues to explore one of the most popular subjects of eighteenth-century art: the seraglio and its harem. This volume provides a deeper understanding of the seraglio's various manifestations in the artworks, music and theatre of the Austrian/ Habsburg and central European regions, including interconnections with Italy and France, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The studies examine descriptions of the seraglio by European diplomats, the seraglio's visual traces in European artworks, and depictions of the seraglio in eighteenth-century Austrian Singspiele. They also consider seraglios from the Ottoman point of view and investigate the music of the seraglio in eighteenth-century opera.

The book series "Ottomania" researches cultural transfers between the Ottoman Empire and Europe, with the performing arts as its focus. The fifth volume of the sub-series Ottoman Empire and European Theatre focuses on The Turkish Subject in Ballet and Dance from the seventeenth century to the time of Christoph W. Gluck (1714-1787). The Turkish theme was a popular topic on European ballet stages throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and most influential choreographers had 'Turkish' ballets in their repertoire. Taking as its departure point Ch. W. Gluck and Gasparo Angiolini (1741-1803), succesful composer and choreographer of ballets at the French theatre in Vienna, this publication discusses the topic from a historical perspective, presents new findings, and introduces the latest scholarly achievements of the research field. Contributions by Emre Aracı, Bruce Alan Brown, David Chataignier, Sibylle Dahms, Vera Grund, Bert Gstettner, Bent Holm, Michael Hüttler, Evren Kutlay, Dóra Kiss, Laura Naudeix, Strother Purdy, Katalin Rumpler, Käthe Springer-Dissmann, Dirk Van Waelderen, Hans Ernst Weidinger

The confrontation between European countries and the expanding Ottoman Empire in the early modern era has played a major role in numerous fields of history. The aim of this book is to investigate the European-Ottoman interrelations from three angles. One deals with the circumstances: How did the Europeans meet the Turks in pragmatic and diplomatic connections? Another concerns imagery: how were the Turks depicted in literature and art? The third examines performativity: how were the Turks inserted into plays, operas and ceremonies? This book confronts mental, visual and embodied images with historical positions and conditions. The focus, therefore, is on the dynamic interactive processes of experience, embodiment and imagination in context. Bringing together Turkish and European scholars, it applies a number of research strategies used by historians to the history of art, literature, music and theatre. Contributions by Pál Ács | Robert Born | Asli Çirakman | Anne Duprat | Kate Fleet | Bent Holm | Marcus Keller | Maria Pia Pedani | Mogens Pelt | Mikael Bøgh Rasmussen | Günsel Renda | Pia Schwarz Lausten | Charlotte Colding Smith | Suna Suner | Dirk Van Waelderen

Diplomats had multiple tasks: not only negotiating with the representatives of other states, but also mediating culture and knowledge, and not least elaborating reports on their observations of politics, society, and culture. Culture, according to the studies featured in this book, is defined as a complex sphere including aspects like systems of communication, literature, music, arts, education, and the creation of knowledge. This edition containing contributions from six conferences held in Vienna and Istanbul by the Don Juan Archiv Wien focuses on the complex diplomatic and cultural relations between the Ottoman Empire and Europe from the time of the early embassies to Istanbul up to "Tanzimat".

The Greek Fire examines the United States' early global influence as the fledgling nation that inserted itself in conflicts that were oceans away. Maureen Connors Santelli focuses on the American fascination with and involvement in the Greek Revolution in the 1820s and 1830s. That nationalist movement incited an American philhellenic movement that pushed the borders of US interests into the eastern Mediterranean and infused a global perspective into domestic conversations concerning freedom and reform. Perceiving strong cultural, intellectual, and racial ties with Greece, American men and women identified Greece as the seedbed of American democracy and a crucial source of American values. From Maryland to Missouri and Maine to Georgia, grassroots organizations sent men, money, and supplies to aid the Greeks. Defending the modern Greeks from Turkish slavery and oppression was an issue on which northerners and southerners agreed. Philhellenes, often led by women, joined efforts with benevolence and missionary groups and together they promoted humanitarianism, education reform, and evangelism. Public pressure on the US Congress, however, did not result in intervention on behalf of the Greeks. Commercial interests convinced US officials, who wished to cultivate commercial ties with the Ottomans, to remain out of the conflict. The Greek Fire analyzes the role of Americans in the Greek Revolution and the aftermath of US involvement. In doing so, Santelli revises understandings of US involvement in foreign affairs, and she shows how diplomacy developed at the same time as Americans were learning what it meant to be a country, and what that country stood for.

This volume surveys democracy broadly as a cultural phenomenon operating in different ways across a very wide range of societies in the nineteenth-century world. In the long nineteenth century, democracy evolved from a contested, maligned conception of government with little concrete expression at the level of the state, to a term widely associated with good governance throughout the diverse political cultures of the Atlantic world and beyond. The geographical scope and public range of discussions about the meaning of democracy in this era were unprecedented in comparison to previous centuries. These lively debates involved fundamental questions about human nature, and encompassed subjects ranging from the scope of the people who would participate in self-government to the importance of social and economic issues. For these reasons, the nineteenth century has proven the formative century in the modern history of democracy. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: sovereignty; liberty and the rule of law; the “common good”; economic and social democracy; religion and the principles of political obligation; citizenship and gender; ethnicity, race, and nationalism; democratic crises, revolutions, and civil resistance; international relations; and beyond the polis. These ten different approaches to democracy in the nineteenth century add up to an extensive, synoptic coverage of the subject.