This panel brings together critical reflections on the literary representations of enslavement in the Ottoman Empire. Given the striking absence of research in literary studies on this topic, in which enslaved bodies are not treated as mere metaphors for oppression and confinement, the panel takes its cues from recent historical scholarship (e.g. Eve Troutt Powell, Ehud R. Toledano, Madeleine C. Zilfi, and Mostafa Minawi) that does not mystify the conditions and actors of this systemic violence.

The central aim of the paper is to spotlight the Ottoman institution of slavery and slave trade as a shaping force in the configuration of genres like novel as well as the articulation of tropes and themes that permeate the Ottoman cultural productions from the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Its second but no less crucial objective is to prompt a rethinking of globalist frameworks in literary criticism by drawing attention to the transcontinental scope of the Ottoman institution of slavery and slave trade; that is, the panel invites scholars to reflect on the implications of this cross-cultural and multi-racial form of systemic violence for the World Literature at large.

The four papers included in the panel will pursue these objectives by zooming in on fictions and translations with a shared intent to encourage a critical reckoning with the historical actualities and contemporary legacies of enslavement in both the Ottoman Empire and modern-day Turkey. Each paper is allowed 12-13 minutes to ensure that the panel has at least 20 minutes left for further discussion and questions.

Burcu Gursel’s paper will discuss the 19^th century Ottoman Turkish translations of the Enlightenment period French fiction on enslavement. Gursel argues that although only few works of the Enlightenment were (repeatedly) translated into Ottoman Turkish (such as Abbe Prévost's Manon Lescaut [1731] and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie [1788]), they come from among a pool of works circling around the issue of slavery and dependency, touching on odalık-like mistress relationships, kidnapping, ransom, indentured labor and metaphorical “shackles.” Ottoman translators, including writers whose mothers were formerly enslaved, were thus drawn to works merely broaching slavery, or resembling Ottoman domestic- familial slavery, but avoided those with a clear abolitionist agenda. What emerges, Gursel claims, is a criss-crossed method of genre transfer favoring the ideological attitudes and intimate ambivalences of the previous century.

Ayse Circir’s paper will look at the moral crisis triggered by slavery in the Konak (mansion) fiction of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Novels such as “Sedef Kakmalı Ev”, “Sodom ve Gomorra” and “Hep O Şarkı,” Circir suggests, shows a transition from larger konaks to more modest yet allegedly "un-Ottoman" apartment flats, or more precisely, a dissolution of the former property relations that were entrenched in the slave economy of the empire. As such, Circir’s presentation will historically situate the Ottoman konak alongside the social tensions emerging from enslavement, looking at interactions between effendis, concubines, odalisques and eunuchs.

Arif Camoglu’s paper bridges the gap between postcolonial studies and Ottoman literature by revisiting the Ottoman Turkish novel as an archive that indexes the silencing of domestically enslaved women. Centering its discussion on Ahmet Mithat Efendi’s novel, Felâtun Bey ile Râkım Efendi, Camoglu’s paper will argue that Ottoman Turkish novels from the late nineteenth century register the muting of women who—detained in the slave economy of the empire—are compelled to rehearse a language that can address overtly neither the institutionality of slavery and slave trade nor the individual accountability of slaveholders.

Lastly, Muge Ozoglu’s paper will examine the erotic novel, “Zifaf Gecesi: Bir Harem Ağasının Muâşakası,” by contextualizing it within the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) during which it was published. Ozoglu contends that the novel's narrative allows for an allegorical reading concerning the imperial politics oft the time. The reification of masculinities with regard to male bodies, a eunuch’s body in this specific case, has a great potential for eroticising the Ottoman Empire’s social, cultural, and political tensions and power struggles. However, Ozoglu’s paper will also problematize the transformation of enslaved bodies into allegorical tools in Ottoman Turkish fiction.