EXPLORING ISTANBUL THROUGH MUSIC, FILM AND LITERATURE

Course Objectives: This course aims to introduce the social, political, and cultural atlas and history of Istanbul through the images of the city in music, film, and literature. For this purpose, each week is designed as a musical, visual, and literary journey to the main districts of the city (Beyoğlu, Haliç, the historical peninsula, Bosphorus, and Kadıköy). A brief historical introduction will be followed each week by a student discussion session about the assigned music, film, or reading material to investigate the multi-layered city. At the end of the course, students will not only gain significant historical knowledge about the city, but they will also be able to relate to the socio-cultural transformation of modern Turkey to Istanbul’s polyphonic and cosmopolitan life and history. In this sense, as a site for the performance of multiple art forms, Istanbul is an indispensable founding member of artistic production and social memory. Poetry, novels, short stories, classical Ottoman music, popular songs, Yeşilçam movies, audio recordings, words, musical notes, and images create infinite spatial entities of the city. Therefore, as the course outcome, students will be asked to do a thematic city atlas, including literary, audio/visual mapping, marking, and explaining a specific district or neighborhood to rethink and recreate the infinite spatial, artistic production. In a sense, they will reproduce the palimpsest memory or a never-ending story of Istanbul.

Course Content: This course explores Istanbul’s daily life and history, focusing on the city’s musical, visual, and literary images.