In the Palaces of the Sultan

Anna Bowman Dodd (1855-1929), a New York travel writer and journalist, journeyed to Istanbul with the American Ambassador to France and was entertained by Abdulhamid II Yildiz Palace in 1901. When the gaieties of the court were finished, Dodd embarked on a detailed account of the city and its people. Interested in documenting the changes in Turkey brought about by the "embrace" of modernity and progress, she considers Turkish women's rights, harems and marriage, the management of the household, education, slavery, the Sultan's reign, and nationalist movements in the last days of the Ottoman Empire. She caters to the American market for Orientalism but is also reflexive about its employment, both invoking and undercutting stereotypes as she address the "Eastern Question." America is marked as playing a pivotal role in the settling of this question: she suggests, in an imperialist fashion, that America might rescue this "weak" power, helping her to exploit her resources and join the commercial market even as she uses Turkey to "teach" America lessons about democracy. Cultures in Dialogue returns to print sources by women writers from the East and West. Series One considers the exchanges between Ottoman, British, and American women from the 1880s to the 1940s. Their varied responses to dilemmas such as nationalism, female emancipation, race relations and modernization in the context of the stereotypes characteristic of Western harem literature reframe the historical tensions between Eastern and Western cultures, offering a nuanced understanding of their current manifestations.