The End

We come to the end of the semester and the SSK 1212, and it's time for an overall reflection on the course.
What are my impressions after taking SSK 1213? Well, the first thing I can say is that it is much more interesting than SSK 1211. Indeed, in this course, we learned things that we didn't already know. This course gave me the opportunity to carry out research in the library, look for information, give an oral presentation using Power Point, and finally write a paper. This is to say that this course actually made me do something myself rather than repeating theoritical strategies of how to prepare for exam (that work only if you live in the ideal world), how to manage your time, etc of SSK 1211.
One of the things I liked most is the Oral presentation. I wanted to test myself, so I did not prepare any notes to read. I tried to discuss the content of the slides based on my research and understanding, and I managed to do it.
Moreover, thanks to this course, I think that from now on, I will be able to write research papers that are properly referenced. This is particularly impotant for me as an IS student. I know from older students that most of the courses in our major will require writing papers. A week ago, I had to submit a paper for GEO 1301, and I must say that what I learned in SSK 1212 was of great help.
I have stated the things that I liked. Let's jump to what I didn't like. First, because of the course and an oversight due to an overwhelming amount of work, I had to pay a fine to the library for overdue books :)
The second thing I didn't like, and that I have perhaps mentioned in an earlier post, is the obligation to be linked with the rest of class and examine the same topic. I think that everyone would have liked to write on something he likes best, since the choice can be given in this course.
Now I am looking forward taking the last of CAD courses, SSK 1213.

Next Step: The Paper

All what have been doing so far, from the beginning of the semester, aimed at achieving one specific purpose, that of writing a research paper of 6 pages, properly referenced according to the MLA system.
Today, we had to bring our first drafts to class in order to compare them and correct referencing mistakes. To write my essay, I have more or less followed the essay outline sketched before. So, now I have a clear idea of the main themes covered in the paper. First, I talked about the religious toleration of the Ottoman Empire. The second theme discusses the condition of women in the Ottoman society, and finally, the last one is a description of the Ottoman architecture. These three aspects of the Ottoman culture seem to me the most important ones. I had some problems with providing in-text reference for articles from websites and books that discuss one single thesis throughout the whole book, making it impossible to give page numbers. Fortunately, the professor was there to solve this technical problem.
I still have two days to refine and edit my paper, which by the way has more than 6 pages. Hopefully, the work of the entire semester will be fruitful!!

PS. I was just wondering whether Turnitin.com recognizes quotes and does not consider them as plagiarism. I hope Turnitin is smart enough to see the quotation marks :)!!!

The Ottomans

After the Presentation

Today, my teammates and I presented our work in the form of a PowerPoint presentation. I was really worried about it even if I tried to show confidence to my teammates. How can I qualify the presentation? well, I cannot say it was excellent since it would be a dishonest claim. Rather, I can say it was more or less good. Indeed, we had some weaknesses in some areas like time management, but this does not affect the work very much (we should not forget that the technical problem at the beginning also took some of the time :)).
We did a great job trying to find the logical linking between the four different research interests, and it was not easy to organize those different topics in a way to give a rather clear image about the influence of religion on culture.
As far as I am concerned, I was happy since I said all I wanted to say without having neither memorized it by heart not referred to any notes. I told myself that, if I am to give a presentation, I will talk spontaneously. I considered today's presentation as an exercise for future talks (after all, I am an IS major!). Therfore, I have to train myself to this kind activities. It involves facing an audience, trying to be natural and concentrating on the idea I want to convey. In brief, my impressions about today's oral presentation are positive.

Power Point Presentation

After the data collection step, it is now the time for the powerpoint presentation.I have started working on my part of the presentation for a week now, but I still need to meet with my teammates in order to have an agreement on the introduction, the conclusion, and the linking slides. Now I'm nearly done with my part of the presentation. I thought at the beginning I would not have much to say. But when I made some order in the information I have and the different resources I dispose of, I found out that I have a lot of things that I would like to include in my presentation. I'm afraid 4 mimutes won't be enough, but I will try to respect the time constraint.
I enjoyed creating themes in the new Power Point, switching colors, and trying to make my presentation more attractive. I liked working on the presentation because I had a lot of fun while doing it.
Here, I have to say that, honestly, the workshop was not very helpful since I already knew most of what the staff from CITI said.
I am a bit scared because I don't want to forget what I want to say. But I am confident everything will be okay.

Summary: Ottoman Women Builders, by Lucienne Thys-Senocak

In her book “Ottoman Women Builders”, Lucienne Thys-Senocak examines how women in the Ottoman Empire used to assert themselves in this Islamic society. This analysis is done through the life of a royal woman, Hadice Turhan Sultan, queen mother of Mehmed IV. Thys-Senocak shows how the patronage of the arts, and especially architecture, helped this royal women to shape a representation of herself in politics and public life. Living in a conservative society like the Ottoman one, embracing Islam, and being the wife of the Protector of the Faith, Hadice Turhan had to find other ways to impose herself, unlike contemporary influent women such as Catherine de Medici or Elizabeth I who could have iconic representations and portraits of themselves. Through commissioning the building of mosques, public baths, houses for the pilgrims, and even military fortresses, she has been able to demonstrate both her piety and her political authority.
The book also deals with other Ottoman women, be them Muslims or non-Muslims and their role in diplomacy and the preparation of the ground for the male decision-making. As Lucienne Thys-Senocak acknowledges it, the correspondence between the Ottoman women of the Harem and other European women, as well as the facility of mobility and action of young women that have been drawn through the devshirme system had a lot of influence in political negociations.
At the heart of “Ottoman Women Builders” is the intersection between the gender, the artistic and political perspectives in regarding women in the Ottoman society.

Thys-Senocak, Lucienne. Ottoman Women Builders: The Architectural
Patronage of Hadice Turhan Sultan. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2006.

Internet sources

After having looked for resources in books in the library, in the periodicals sectiona and in electronic journals, the next step is to run research on the internet. Internet offers a wide range of information, and it is sometimes very hard to find what are exactly looking for. Because it is most of the time free, people have the possibility to write whatever they like without referring to peer review. This might make the research process difficult because good and bad quality information are mixed and require from us the effort of untangling them. This is why the skill of evaluation is necessary to be successful while dealing with internet resources. Personally, my research on the net has been more or less fruitful. Of course, the majority of websites were either unreliable, irrelevant, or simply touristic and commercial offers concerning Turkey. However, I had the opportunity to identify ideas that would fit in my paper.
I think the internet search is helpful since it enables to have a lot of ideas in a shorter time. It offers a lot of details, and I would have needed to read every single page in the books to find more or less the same details. It is not that I deny the importance of books, but the issue of time is very important. Now I realize how hard writing a research paper was before the invention of the internet. People had to spend a lot of time to read books, take notes effectively because they might not have the opportunity to find those books again, and ultimately combine pieces of information. We are very lucky to have the Ctrl F function to help us go directly to the paragraph where the idea we are looking for is dicussed. But we are faced with another challenge which comes along with technology which is that of evaluation and a sense of criticism.

This entry will be a reflection about the blog experience so far. Although I like writing entries in this blog, I reckon conducting research in order to write a research paper is not an easy task. I think it is quite difficult to run a research while being attached to the classmates' topics. The first constraint is that we all had to work on culture; the second is that ther must be a relationship between the research interests of members of the same group. These things said, I still believe writing a research paper is a good thing because it's like an exercise for the future, and blogging is very interesting as well as very fun.
I am still very excited about the activity of writing in a blog.

The first thing I would like to say is that I had a new idea concerning what my research paper will be about: maybe that I can explore dervishism in Ottoman Islamic society as an aspect of the impact of religion on culture.The good thing is that I actually have a book that deals about this topic, and I won't be not dependent on EBSCO :)
Today's entry will be about one of the sources I have collected. I will start with the book about Architecture. The book analyzes arts and arts in the early Ottoman era as well as after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. The book states that the Ottoman architecture was inspired by the byzantine model, namely the masterpiece Hagia Sophia.
The book also gives the description of the major Ottoman monuments, most of which are in Istanbul. It also gives the utility and the functions of some parts of palaces and mosques. For example, it describes how the emperial family disposes of the parts of the palace, and the protocol behind the way it disposes of it.
From another perspective, the book also deals with other arts including tapestry making. It gives its history and origins and how interactions between the Ottoman culture and other cultures such as the Iranian has given birth to novel aspects of arts.
Other arts, including ceramics and calligraphy, are discussed in this book.

The French proverb says:" Ce n'est pas toujours Dimanche". Well, I've just had my first deception in the process of data collection. One of the sources I thought I would rely on to write my research paper and which I was very happy to find turns out to be of no help for me. Indeed, the article I found on EBSCO "Subjects of the Sultan:Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire" is just a book review with no helpful information. Now, I have to go back and search for other sources as one of the themes I want my research paper to focus on is precisely the daily life and the traditions of people in the Ottoman Empire.
Hopefully, EBSCO won't play a trick on me next time!!!

The process of data collection is ongoing. After we learned how to look for books in the library of Congress of the university, yesterday a staff of the library animated a workshop the purpose of which was to help us use the electronic resources and the different databases provided. Now I think I am able to use EBSCO (Elton B. Stephens COmpany) database to look for journals and aricles. I found two interesting results which I emailed to my inbox. Both articles appeared in the Journal of Islamic Studies. The first one is entiltled " Subjects of the Sultan: Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire", which I believe would be of great help for me to trace the behavior, the customs and traditions, and the everyday life of people in the Ottoman era. The second is "The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire" deals more with building aspects and architectural traits.

My data collection has been very fruitful so far, be it in terms of books or articles from the databases. Still, the most important thing in yesterday's step is that we had to look for information in authoritative sources and peer-reviewed journals.

Now that I have a topic for my research paper, it is great time to start thinking about how to narrow it and find sub-topics. This step is not that easy. In fact, the Islamic culture in the Ottoman era is a very vague, and I am a bit confused about what to include. I am still not able to decide about the parts or the themes that my research paper will be about. I hope this period of confusion and puzzlement won't last very long. Nevertheless, I quite sure I want to talk about the Ottoman architecture as a part of the Islamic Culture. I would like to analyze the architecture of some historical monuments in Istanbul including the Topkapi Palace, the Grand Bazaar,...and perhaps compare them with the Byzantine buildings to see the influence of the Christian Byzantine style on the Islamic Ottoman one. Another aspect of culture I would like to include is the behavior of Ottoman people at that time, their traditions, their celebrations...
Today, we went to the library to try to find some resources related to our research topic. This was of great help for me because it enabled me to know about the resources available for my topic. Now I have a realistic view about my topic. I found a book which I think is interesting entitled The Dervish Lodge: Architecture, Art and Sufism in Ottoman Turkey. That's all for today :)

One of the requirements of the Information and Literacy skills course SSK 1212 is to write a research paper by the end of the semester. In order to keep track of the brainstorming of ideas, the data collection, the analysis and all the different phases they have gone through, students were asked to create a Research Blog.
The general theme that our class agreed on is Culture. My teammates and I have decided to look at Culture from the perspective of religions. We want to explore the influence of religions on traditions, arts, lifestyles,...Personally, I will work on the Islamic culture under the Ottoman Empire, while my teammates will focus on the other Abrahamic religions (Judaism and Christianity)
Why did I choose the Ottoman Empire as an illustration of the Islamic culture and not the Umayyad or Abbassid ones? Perhaps it is a subjective choice. Indeed, I have a great admiration for arts and the architecture of the Ottoman Era, and Istanbul has certainly something to do with it.
But most important, I think it is tremendously important to study the Ottoman culture since it lays between two different worlds: the Eastern Islamic and the Western Christian world. What is more, it is well known that under the reign of Ottoman Emperors, the three religions have coexisted. The contact between them has certainly led to an uncomparable diversity.
Throughout the research process, I will try to explore aspects of the Ottoman culture including architecture, tapestry making, language, social life and behavior..., but I will also try to understand its interaction with and the influence of other neighboring cultures.