RUB Junior Professor Hülya Çelik sheds light on Armenian-Turkish literature and advocates an inclusive and comparative research approach

The workshop enabled an in-depth examination of the complex issues of the Middle East from a range of perspectives and, according to participants, opened up new and diverse opportunities for research collaboration between Brazil and Germany.

“What impressed me most was clearly the high quality of research on the Middle East and North Africa demonstrated by colleagues, as well as by the many students who attended. I see great potential precisely in the diversity of our approaches, which do not exclude one another but instead illuminate different facets of the Middle East and North Africa in complementary ways,” emphasised Professor Philip Bockholt from University of Münster, who led the organisation of the workshop.

“Through collaboration with our Brazilian partners, we were able to gain a more global perspective on the regions of North Africa and the Middle East — one that goes beyond traditions in Germany and Europe and takes Latin American realities and priorities into account,” he added.

The first part of the event took place from September 16 to 18 in São Paulo at the Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH). Renowned scholars such as Arlene Clemesha (USP) and Bockholt himself discussed questions relating to linguistic and cultural interaction, philosophy, religion and media with fellow researchers. The following week, on September 23 and 24, the workshop continued in Niterói at UFF’s Gragoatá Campus.

For Anja Grecko Lorenz, Head of Programmes of the German Centre for Research and Innovation (DWIH) São Paulo, the workshop offered a valuable opportunity for German researchers to familiarise themselves with the current state of Middle Eastern studies in Brazil. “Scholarship advances critical dialogue from different perspectives and fosters the comparison of diverse methodological approaches. International exchange in particular gives rise to new research questions, critically challenges established narratives and opens up innovative research pathways,” said Lorenz.

Debates

The workshop at UFF addressed topics such as nationalism, religion and diaspora in the Middle East; media, narratives and politics; as well as representation and activism, literature and translation. In addition to the German Centre for Research and Innovation (DWIH) São Paulo, the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) presented funding and research opportunities in Germany.

On the first day of the event, UFF Professor Paulo Pinto introduced the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies (Neom), regarded as one of the leading references for Middle Eastern studies in Brazil, bringing together researchers who conduct fieldwork in places such as Egypt, Morocco and Lebanon. He also presented his ethnographic research on a Sufi community in Aleppo, Syria, whose members he encountered again as refugees and exiles in Jordan, Turkey and Germany following the outbreak of the civil war in 2011.

Junior Professor Hülya Çelik from Ruhr University Bochum reflected on Armenian-Turkish literature, which she defined as “texts in Turkish written in the Armenian alphabet”. This hybrid form of writing experienced a particular surge from the eighteenth century onwards with the rise of Armenian printing and was by no means a marginal phenomenon: around 20 per cent of Armenian-Turkish production consists of translations, particularly of European works. Çelik advocated an inclusive and comparative approach to the study of these texts.

Subsequently, Bockholt explored the universe of translation in the Ottoman Empire, which he described as a multilingual space dominated by three scholarly languages: Arabic, Persian and Turkish. In a study covering the period from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century, the professor from University of Münster demonstrates that translation in the premodern era was not an act of literal transfer. Rather, literary works underwent considerable changes in the course of translation, including the addition of chapters and even the modification of arguments. Each translation was, in effect, a fluid process. “Many members of the elite financed translations because they wished to associate their own names with that of the author. In this case, translation was less about language and more about personal prestige,” Bockholt explained.

Text: Rafael Targino