-A report by Sergen Avci
Dr. Didem Havlioğlu, a literary historian and Associate Professor at Duke University who works on women and gender in the Islamicate world, gave a fascinating talk titled “Performance, Subversion, and Gender-Bending in Ottoman Poetry” on April 18th, 2024. With this talk, Dr. Havlioğlu contributed to the Walter G. Andrews Memorial Lecture Series hosted by the Turkish and Ottoman Studies Program in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures. Her lecture delved into the intricate field of early modern Ottoman poetry, exploring concepts of gender, performativity, and marginality, with a particular focus on the woman poet Mihrî Hatun (c. 1515). Dr. Havlioğlu successfully illuminated the experience of being a woman poet in early modern Ottoman court culture, scrutinizing Mihrî Hatun’s poetry alongside narratives produced by male authors about her.