Workshop 3 – Phanar après Phanar: Afterlife and the Search for the Phanariots, From the Nineteenth Century to the Present
Date: 16 June 2023
Time: 18:00-21:00 (Turkey local time, GMT+3)
As part of a planned three-year research event-series under the overarching project title “Phanariot Materialities,” scientifically led by Namık Günay Erkal, Firuzan Melike Sümertaş, and Haris Theodorelis-Rigas, we are organizing a workshop series entitled, “In Search of the Phanariot Abode: Aspects of Domestic Culture, Residential Architecture and Court Life.” Consisting of three workshops, each corresponding to a specific period of Phanariot activity, the workshop series will serve as preliminary, in-house gatherings in preparation of an international symposium (28–30 June 2024, Istanbul). We also aim to publish a volume resulting from the symposium and to organize an exhibition (Istanbul, 2025) on the same subject. The main aim of these workshops is to develop a new network of scholars within the field of “Phanariot studies” and pave the ground for new collaborative and interactive research.
This third workshop titled “Phanar après Phanar: Afterlife and the Search for the Phanariots, From the Nineteenth Century to the Present,” focuses on Phanar’s “Afterlife.” The 1821 Greek War of Independence and the subsequent emergence of a new Greek state mark a critical decline in the administrative role of the Phanariots vis-à-vis the Ottoman State.
This dramatic development deeply affected the material and social conditions of the neighborhood. The confiscation of Phanariot properties resulted in the destruction of the urban-bourgeois material culture and the dispersion of Phanariot material remains throughout former imperial territories, including Romania and the Modern Greek State. Subsequent tensions in the positioning of the Phanariots within the national narratives of Romania and Greece (as well as Turkey), have prevented the emergence of a coordinated conservationist approach to Phanariot material culture.
The urban-social transformation of Phanar paved the way for the reappropriation of neighborhood identity, revolving around the in-situ remnants of the Phanariot age. This, in turn, opened a new debate on the emerging modes of new Phanariot belongings, in and out of Istanbul.
For the third workshop’s program click here.
Phanariot Materialities is institutionally initiated and led by Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED), Istanbul. The present institutional partners of the project include the Istanbul Research Institute (IAE) , and Sismanoglio Megaro. Collaboration with the Gennadios Library, Benaki Museum, and Centre for Asia Minor Studies in Greece and Romanian institutions is als