Writing the Void

On the Methods and Ethics of Constructing the Memory of Absent Armenian Heritage within Ottoman Architectural and Social Histories: The Case of Early Ottoman Amasya

Lecture by Polina Ivanova (Institute of Iranian Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences)

Thursday, February 19, 2026, 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm

CEU Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies 

Vienna Campus, Quellenstrasse 51, Room : D-001 Tiered

In the late fifteenth century, the royal Ottoman mosque complex of Bayezid II was built in Amasya, an important city in Ottoman Anatolia, directly beside a small medieval Armenian church, St. Nicholas. For centuries that followed, and until 1915, these two spaces coexisted, serving Amasya's multi-confessional population. Today, the royal complex dominates both the cityscape and the architectural histories of the city. The Armenian church, by contrast, has disappeared: physically destroyed during the Armenian Genocide, it was soon erased from urban memory and excluded from subsequent scholarship on Amasya's history and architecture. Focusing on the case of St. Nicholas, this talk examines what it means to construct the memory of an absence. It engages the Armenian genre of houshamadyan or "memory books" to show what precious evidence about Armenian monuments can still be "excavated" from these texts. At the same time, it argues against the temptation to simply "reconstruct" perished monuments and seamlessly inscribe them into existing urban and architectural historiographies. Instead, it advocates for a research and narrative method that exposes the inherent limits of the surviving evidence, attends to singular stories of erasure and survival, and uses the space of scholarship to render the voids left by disappeared Armenian heritage palpable in ways that the cities themselves no longer (not yet?) can.

Working with Monastic Repositories: Navigating Access, Preservation, and Knowledge Production

A Workshop, organized within the framework of the Cluster of Excellence ‘EurAsian Transformations’ 

(Funded by FWF, grant-DOI: 10.55776/COE8)  and in cooperation with  the ERC-2020-STG ‘ORTHPOL’ and the ERC-2024-CoG ‘OttomanCORE’ by Ovidiu-Victor Olar, Mariya Kiprovska, and Grigor Boykov

Date: February 20 (Friday), 2026

Venue: Apostelgasse 23, 1030 Wien, Seminar Room (Ground Floor)

Monastic repositories, which preserve a wealth of historical holdings rooted in centuries-old traditions, have long been recognized by scholars as rich resources for academic research. Researchers who engage with these collections, however, are frequently confronted with a range of practical, methodological, and ethical challenges related to access, preservation, cataloguing, and interpretation. Organized within the framework of the Cluster of Excellence EurAsian Transformations and its Work Package on the multilingual archival holdings of the Athonite monastery of Zograf, this workshop focuses on the concrete practices of working with monastic archives. It brings together scholars with direct experience in accessing, handling, cataloguing, digitizing, and editing monastic manuscript and archival collections across Eurasia. By emphasizing hands-on perspectives and comparative discussion, the workshop seeks to address shared challenges, exchange effective strategies, and reflect on how everyday archival practices shape research outcomes and scholarly knowledge production in multilingual and institutionally embedded monastic environments.

Consuls have long occupied an ambiguous place in the historiography of international relations. Ubiquitous in imperial infrastructures, yet largely overshadowed by ambassadors and high diplomacy, the historical role of a consular agent has often been derided as the manager of a ‘red tape factory’ or as playing second fiddle as the diplomat’s sidekick; a Watson to their Holmes. Recent scholarship has begun to reevaluate the consular institution as central to the functioning of empire, commerce, migration, legal authority and diplomacy, particularly during the long nineteenth century when, it is now acknowledged, consuls enjoyed their ‘finest hour’ as integral actors in an increasingly globalising and interwoven world.

Within this frame, the consuls of the Habsburg Monarchy (and later Austria-Hungary) offer an especially rich but understudied case beyond the works of Rudolf Agstner, Engelbert Deusch and others. From port cities in the Eastern Mediterranean to consular offices in North and South America, East Asia, and across Central and Eastern Europe, Habsburg consuls acted as diplomatic agents, commercial protectors, legal intermediaries, cultural brokers, and imperial scouts. Their activities illuminate how Habsburg power projected itself through informal means via networks of officials which, at its peak, numbered 493 consulates at the turn of the twentieth century. By embedding itself into transregional circuits of governance, trade, and information, the Habsburg Monarchy asserted its global presence through pragmatic (and sometimes even clandestine) locally anchored forms of statecraft. 

The conference workshop will be hosted by Institute for Habsburg and Balkans Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv of the Austrian State Archives, with the support of the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies.

Contact: Barbara Haider-Wilson

For more information: https://www.oeaw.ac.at/ihb/detail/event/habsburg-international

Coorganized by the Orient-Institut Istanbul, the Center for the Study of Manuscript Cultures Hamburg and the Institute for Medieval Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

https://oiist.org/call-for-applications-reading-the-city/

Instructors

Dr. Christiane Czygan, Orient-Institut Istanbul

Prof. Dr. Kaja Harter-Uibopuu, CSMC Hamburg

Dr. Krystina Kubina, University of Vienna

Prof. Dr. Christoph K. Neumann, Orient-Institut Istanbul

PD Dr. Andreas Rhoby, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna

Prof. Dr. Mustafa Hamdi Sayar, Istanbul University

Assist. Prof. Dr. Gülşah Taşkın, Boğaziçi University

This interdisciplinary Summer Academy invites advanced MA students, doctoral candidates, and early postdoctoral researchers to explore the role of epigraphy in shaping Istanbul’s urban, sacred, and imperial spaces across antiquity, the Byzantine era, and the Ottoman period.

Inscriptions constitute not only documents but also monuments or artefacts situated in specific spatial settings, where they actively mark and articulate thresholds. This conviction forms the basis for all further inquiries of the academy. Building on this perspective, the program will examine how epigraphic texts delineate transitions between sacred and profane, interior and exterior, imperial and civic. Inscriptions on palatial gates and entrances to religious buildings, on convent walls, and along the Bosporus shoreline in Üsküdar (a major point of passage between Anatolia and Istanbul) will serve as case studies.

Sessions will combine seminar discussions with excursions in the city, allowing participants to engage with inscriptions both in a classroom setting and in situ. Student presentations will alternate with contributions by the faculty, fostering an interactive and dialogical format. Emphasis will be placed not only on decipherment but also on the physical setting, visibility, and performative dimensions of each inscription. Broader questions and comparative approaches are welcome.

Working knowledge of at least one epigraphic language (Ancient Greek, Latin, Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, etc.) is recommended.

Costs for accommodation will be supported. Lunch as well as two group dinners will be covered.

Application deadline: January 3, 2026, notifications will be sent by January 31, 2026

Please upload application with your motivation letter, CV, and a short letter of reference each as a separate PDF file using the link here.