From the Director – Summer 2021
From the Director…
It is with a combination of excitement and cautious realism that we find ourselves returning to in-person programs for the fall 2021 semester at ANAMED. Having completed more than one academic year of online programs and working from home productively in all our areas of activity, we eagerly await the establishment of this new normal. At the same time, we remain confident in our ability to carry on ANAMED’s mission remotely if necessary. This confidence stems from a track record built on some of the items appearing in this latest newsletter, made possible as always by ANAMED’s dedicated team and growing community of affiliates and alums.
Regularly scheduled lectures and conversations in the “ANAMED Talks” and “ANAMED Library Talks” series continued unbroken through the second term of the academic year, as did new episodes of the ANAMED Library’s “Burada Konuşmak Serbest” podcast (“Speaking Here is Allowed”). One-off thematic offerings included an online panel discussion about a documentary focusing on the Neolithic of Türkiye (“Anadolu’nun Kadim Hikâyesi”/“The Ancient Story of Anatolia”), a library seminar on manuscript preservation, and several library programs jointly organized with KU’s other research centers (focusing on travelogues) and the Suna Kıraç Library (participating in International Preservation Week and International Archives Week activities). Our first forays into multi-day online symposia included “WANAT: Western Anatolia in the Second Millennium BCE: Recent Developments and Future Prospects” (co-organized with faculty from Charles University, Prague, and Tübingen University) and “Winds of Change: Environment and Society in Anatolia,” the 15th International ANAMED Annual Symposium (IAAS) (co-organized with faculty from Princeton University). Together, these symposia attracted the attention of more than 1200 people from at least 15 countries, encouraging continued exploration of options for hybrid in-person/online events beyond the pandemic.
Publication work continued the brisk pace of the first half of the year with the Turkish version of the 13th IAAS proceedings, Bizans, Selçuklu ve Osmanlı Topraklarında Kültürel Üretim Aracı Olarak Sırlı Kaplar, out in September 2021, followed later in the fall by the English version of the 15th IAAS proceedings, Winds of Change: Environment and Society in Anatolia. Along with all ANAMED volumes in English now published under the Koç University Press imprint, this volume will benefit from global distribution by the University of Chicago Press, where most of ANAMED’s previous English volumes can be found, as well.
Digital conversion of ANAMED exhibitions continued to make Merkez Han Gallery content accessible to the global public. Efforts included curation of recent exhibits as virtual tours as well as the launch of our newest online exhibition: a dedicated website for “The Curious Case of Çatalhöyük” exhibit now joins earlier sites for “Camera Ottomana” and “Yusuf Franko.” Those who have yet to catch the long-running “Archival Memories” exhibit can still see it in person through later this year.
Along with the fourth ANAMED offering of SARAT’s “Safeguarding and Rescuing Archaeological Assets” Online Program and the second offering of our “Environmental Archaeology Online Program,” summer 2021 activities included the “Ottoman Summer Program” and “Ancient Languages of Anatolia.” Even though successful and popular in their online versions, we hope that summer 2022 will allow a return to the in-person formats of these programs.
As we welcome our newly arriving 2021–2022 fellows in person, we salute what was the first (and only, we hope) cohort of “remote” ANAMED fellows, who completed their fellowships in fine form despite challenging circumstances. In the selection of brief reports included in this newsletter, you can read about their projects and progress made over the course of the fellowship year. We will look forward to keeping in touch with them and following their work into the future. To help preserve these precious academic connections, I’d like to highlight renewed efforts to maintain our annually growing network of ANAMED alumni—now over 400 strong. Our social media channels have been active in this endeavor for years, of course, but new efforts include solidifying ANAMED’s alumni community and collecting alumni publication data, in attempts to track ANAMED fellows’ work to both share and promote it. If you haven’t heard from us yet, please drop a line or drop by as possible to rekindle what we hope to be a life-long conversation!