During the academic year of 2016-2017, we have held several marbling workshops on and off campus and shared the colors of Turkish culture through the universal language of art.

Ebru is the traditional Turkish art of creating colorful patterns by sprinkling and brushing color pigments onto a pan of oily water and then transferring the patterns to paper. Known as marbling, this art is commonly used for decoration in the traditional art of bookbinding. The knowledge and skills of Ebru artists, apprentices and practitioners are transmitted orally and through informal practical training within master-apprentice relationships. Ebru encourages dialogue, reinforces social ties and strengthens relations between individuals and communities.

UNESCO Intangible Heritage

1983’te İzmir Bornova’da doğdu. Lisans eğitimini Muğla Sıtkı Koçman Üniversitesi Felsefe bölümünde tamamladı. Varoluşçuluk çalışmalarına “Albert Camus ve J.P. Sartre’da Saçma’nın Karşılaştırılması” isimli yüksek lisans tezi ile başladı. Çalışmalarını “Søren Kierkegaard’da Kaygı Kavramı” üzerine doktora tezi ile sürdürdü. Bu kapsamda 2010-2011 yılları arasında Southern Illinois Üniversitesi (ABD)’nde araştırmacı olarak bulundu. Doktorasını tamamladığı yıl doktora tezi kitaplaştırılarak Ayrıntı Yayınları tarafından basıldı. 2014 ve 2015 yıllarında, Howard and Edna Hong Kierkegaard Library bursiyeri olarak Northfield, Minnesota (USA)’ya davet edildi. Birçok farklı yayın evi için editörlük çalışmaları da yapan Yasemin Akış Yaman, şu anda Villanova Üniversitesi, Department of Religious Studies’de Misafir öğretim üyesi olarak olarak bulunmaktadır.

Presentations and discussions with scholars from Princeton University on Digital sources and material in Ottoman History with Serkan Savk and Bahar Emgin.

Serkan Şavk: received his Ph.D. from Hacettepe University, Turkey in 2014, and he teaches at Izmir University of Economics (IUE) Department of Cinema and Digital Media. During his stay at the Department of History, Dr. Savk will conduct a research project titled Mapping the Early Modern Istanbul (MEMI). MEMI is a digital mapping project for the visual and textual narratives on Istanbul, particularly from the 17th and 18th centuries. His stay at Princeton is funded by TUBITAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) and IUE Overseas Experience Program.

Bahar Emgin, who completed her undergraduate studies in the department of ‘Industrial Products Design’, received her PhD in 2014 at Bilkent University’s ‘Visual and Cultural Studies’ department. She teaches applied and theoretic courses at Yaşar University’s ‘Department of Visual Communication Design’ since she has joined its teaching staff in 2010. She continues her academic studies on the fields of ‘history of design’, ‘culture of design’, as well as ‘material and visual culture.’ Since April 2016, she has been a visiting scholar at the Parsons School of Design and researches on the ‘Effects of the technical support provided by the American Government  during the 1950s on the development of the practice of design in Turkey.

 

Our students enjoyed an engaging journey into the ancient history of Anatolian civilizations. Archeologist Canan Geleri from Turkish Museum of Anatolian Civilizations guided our students through iconic artifacts of Phrygian civilization at Penn Museum. 

 

We also enjoyed the mesmerizing photos from İstanbul in Ahmet Ertuğ’s ‘Sacred Spaces’ exhibition.

As the Turkish Department, we had our end-of-course dinner at a lovely Turkish cafe called “Evil Eye Cafe”. Besides enjoying the delicious Turkish foods like “köfte” and dessert “baklava”, we also had an interesting chat over a glass of Turkish tea.