Maureen Jackson of Carleton’s Department of Middle Eastern Languages will give a talk entitled “Dervishes and Cantors: Muslim-Jewish Musical Encounters, Empire to Nation” at 7:30 p.m. on Thurs., Feb. 10, in the Gould Library Athenaeum. This talk is free and open to the public. This event is part of a series of events related to Turkish music and ethnomusicology.
Jackson’s talk will be based on ethnographic fieldwork that she carried out in Istanbul, Turkey. She will focus on music-making among Turkish Jews and Muslims in the context of the historical ruptures and continuities across the 20th and 21st centuries as the Ottoman Empire, which formerly controlled most of the Middle East as well as large parts of North Africa and the Balkans, collapsed and the secular, modern state of Turkey emerged.
With degrees from Stanford University and the University of Washington, Jackson is the ACLS New Faculty Fellow in Middle Eastern Languages at Carleton College. Her research focuses on Jews and other minorities groups in the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey, particularly through their contributions to musical culture. Using ethnographic methods, she studies intercommunal relations as a part of the transformations that Turkey has undergone in the past century.
This talk is occurring in conjunction with several other events on similar themes in the coming weeks. At noon on Thurs., Feb. 17, Turkish singer Ahmet Erdoğdular will give a lecture and demonstration of Turkish vocal techniques in the Athenaeum. At 8 p.m. on Sat., Feb. 19, Ahmet Erdoğdular and Münir Beken will present a not-to-be-missed performance of Turkish and Ottoman classical music in the Concert Hall.
This event is sponsored by the Department of Middle Eastern Languages. For more information or disability accommodations, contact Jean Sherwin at (507) 222-5437 or sherwin@carleton.edu.