Self-Orientalization: Women and Their Reflection

Art History 382: Global Modern Art

Purdue University

April 23, 2021

2

In modern times mirrors are an object of daily life. People rely on them to see what they

look like and they assume that the reflection is an accurate representation of who they are.

However, not all mirrors are equal or trustworthy. Centuries of artwork have depicted a

reflection of their subjects. These reflections are dangerous because they are often distorted and

are passed down through the ages as truth. These distorted images have the power to change not

only how people view others, but also how they view themselves. This issue is particularly

prevalent in the representation of Turkish women.

The Orientalist movement in the 1800s brought to the forefront the issue of Westerner’s

representation of people other than white males. European’s brought their own set of ideas on the

presentation of women and “the other” and they transferred those ideas to the representation of

Turkish women. The image of a woman observing herself in a mirror was extremely common in

Western art, known by the general name Venus at her Toilette. This imagery was so prolific that

its use was transferred to Turkish art. An example of this is found in the work Aynah Gözde (The

Sultan’s Favorite) (Fig. 1) by Mihri Müşfik. One might assume that Müşfik, as a woman and a

Turkish artist, would give the most accurate representation of a fellow Turkish woman, however

this is not the case. The reflection is distorted because it was created by looking in a mirror that

was handed to her by the West.

This encourages important questions about the lasting effects of Orientalism and its

influence on the Turkish self-image. This paper seeks to uncover the origins of the male Western

representation of women and how it was passed down through Orientalism and later Self-

Orientalization through the works of European and Turkish artists. This analysis will help to

separate the lenses used in Oriental art and address the question of where the current reflection of

Turkish women originated and whether it is accurate.

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The Western Mirror

The Orientalist representation of women is rooted in the representation of Western

women. The mirror has played a prominent role through Western history as an instrument of

judgment and a symbol of women’s place in society. Understanding the mirror and women

requires an examination of the origin of female presentation, the male gaze, nakedness versus

nudity, and the prevalence of Venus at her Toilette.

Beginning with the nakedness of Adam and Eve, there has been an imbalance between

the presentation of men and that of women. The sin of Adam and Eve brought shame and guilt

over their nakedness. Although early works depict the narrative of Adam and Eve, later works

beginning during the Renaissance displayed only the moment of shame and an acknowledgment

of the viewer.1 Adam and Eve shared the shame in relation to the viewer, but most of the

judgment was reserved for Eve and is found at the root of many depictions of the female nude.2

Women were the personification of evil and the fall of man which gave the viewer the excuse of

staring in judgment when they were watching her for pleasure.3 With this change in Eve’s

representation came a change of her posture in artworks. She was initially painted standing next

to Adam as equals in their shame. An example of this is Adam and Eve (Fig. 2) by 16th-century

artist Jan Gossaert. However, later paintings of women show them lying down or supine. There

is a prolific number of academic paintings of women lying down, but the same cannot be said for

men. In academic paintings the few times men are shown supine is when they have died in battle

or through some other heroic sacrifice.4 This is because the supine position is seen as submissive

1
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: BBC and Penguin, 1972. 48-49
2
Leppert, Richard D. The Nude: The Cultural Rhetoric of the Body in the Art of Western
Modernity. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2007. 82
3
Ibid. 83
4
Ibid 84
4

and a worthy punishment for the deception of Adam. This submission and judgment will

continue to exist throughout the artistic representation of women.

Portrayals of the shame and judgment of Eve opened women to spectators and laid the

groundwork for the problem of the male gaze and the dichotomy of nakedness and nudity.

According to author Laura Mulvey, “[The male gaze] projects its fantasy on to the female figure

which is styled accordingly.”5 Mulvey presents the idea that the reflection that women see of

themselves through art is a fantasy created for them by men. It is this fantasy that creates the

distinction between the female nude and nakedness. Nakedness is a representation of the true

self, allowing the subject to have an identity with thoughts of their own. However, there is no

real woman in nude paintings. The work is staged to appeal to the ideal viewer, a white man.6 An

example of this is found in Venus, Cupid, Time, and Love (Fig. 3) by Bronzino. Venus’s body is

elevated and twisted at an unnatural angle facing forward with Cupid grasping her breast. This is

not a reasonable pose as she appears to be levitating and on the verge of toppling over.7 This

sexualized, theatrical positioning and twisting of the female form is a common thread in both the

presentation of the Western nude and later in the presentation of the European Turkish fantasy.

Male Western artists consistently present women as sexualized nudes and the result is feminine

objectification. As author John Berger describes it, “Nakedness reveals itself, nudity is placed on

display.”8 The display of nudity is curated for the male gaze to make the male viewer feel

necessary and important as the fantasy woman positions herself facing him to be observed. In

turn, the male gaze is internalized and women begin to examine themselves through the eyes of

men. The internalization of the male gaze is the foundation of Self-Orientalization.

5
Mulvey, Laura Visual and Other Pleasures, 2nd ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, p. 19.
6
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: BBC and Penguin, 1972. p. 54
7
Leppert, Richard D. The Nude: The Cultural Rhetoric of the Body in the Art of Western Modernity. Boulder, Colo.:
Westview Press, 2007. 89
8
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: BBC and Penguin, 1972. p. 54
5

The judgment of women and the fantasy woman created by the male gaze combine

through the addition of the mirror. The guilt of the male viewer is transferred to the woman and

judged as vanity and mirrors became an ever-present symbol of this vanity. They put into

perspective the woman’s position as a “sight” while she is examined by men while examining

herself.9 In John Berger’s examination of Vanity (Fig. 4) by Hans Memling he states, “You

painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and

called the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had

depicted for your own pleasure.”10 The use of the mirror solidified its place in art history through

the imagery of Venus at her Toilette. Countless works appear with this title and they all include a

nude woman studying herself in a mirror. Examples include Venus with a Mirror (Fig. 5) by

Titian and Morning Toilet of Venus (Fig. 6) by Rubens. In 1877 astronomer John Brett proposed

the theory that the planet had a “burnished, reflective surface” similar to a mirror, and he

expected that at the right time one could see the reflection of earth’s surface in Venus. Brett’s

idea, although scientifically questionable, provides an excellent metaphor for Venus at her

Toilette.11 The planet Venus is considered a beautiful sight, but in reality the viewer only sees

their own face reflected back at them. Concerning mirrors in relation to the toilette, in the 18th

century the upper classes began using mirrors in many aspects of decoration including mirror

halls such as the one found in Versaille. As a result the mirror developed a prominent place in

society.12 The later part of the century introduced the cabinet de toilette which usually included

9
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: BBC and Penguin, 1972. 51
10
Ibid 52
11
Brett, John “The Specular Reflection Hypothesis, and its bearing on the Transit of Venus,” Monthly
Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 37 (January 1877), 126.
12
Cohut, Maria-Silvia. "Before and Beyond the Glass: Women and Their Mirrors in the Literature
and Art of Nineteenth-Century Britain." Proquest 2018. 21
6

multiples mirrors where ladies could admire and groom themselves.13 In this way women

continued the obligatory self-scrutiny required of them by the male gaze.

These ideals and views of women are at the core of western representation and were

eventually carried over to the East where Western artists combined them with the theatrical

sexualization of Turkish women.

Orientalism

Before beginning an analysis of Western Orientalism and the reflection of women in

Turkey, it is important to discuss the Western attitude toward the Orient beginning around

Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798.14 This invasion was accompanied by a wave of western

thoughts and assumptions surrounding Turks and other Muslim people groups.

Osman I founded the Ottoman Empire around 1299 and slowly grew in power as a series

of sultan’s lead the government. The empire reached its height in 1517 when Selim I brought

Egypt, Palestine, Arabia, and Syria under Ottoman control.15 Europeans’ respected the Empire

when it was powerful and some even adopted dress as a display of their proximity to power.

Madame de Pompadour, Mistress of Louis the XV, famously commissioned artist Carle van Loo

to paint a portrait of her as a sultana. The work Madame de Pompadour as Sultana (Fig. 7) was

used to solidify her position with the King as a wise and cultured confidant.16 In this case,

Madame de Pompadour took control of her image and used Ottoman culture when it was held in

high regard. Her example stands in opposition to the previous section where the male gaze

dominated the presentation of women. However, she was in a position of power where she was

able to create her reflection, while images of Turkish women in the west were imagined and

13
Ibid 22
14
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Vintage Books, 1979. 23
15
“Ottoman Empire.” History.com, November 3, 2017. https://www.history.com/topics/middle-east/ottoman-empire.
16
Shaw, Wendy. Possessors and Possessed, Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of History in the Late
Ottoman Empire . University of California Press, 2003. 100
7

controlled by white men. When the Ottoman Empire was powerful its clothing and culture were

seen positively, hence Madame de Pompadour’s portrait. However, it was not necessarily more

accurate and as Ottoman power decreased the Turkish culture would become less respected and

exoticized, oversexualized artwork would become more common.

The Orient as depicted by Europeans was almost entirely imaginary and presented in a

distorted manner even more extreme than that of Western women. Although the Orient itself is a

place with real people, Orientalism is a construct that has very real consequences on those

people.17 It is based on a balance of power between two groups with one being the dominated

“other.” With the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the power balance shifted between the West

and the Orient and Westerner’s opinion quickly diminished with the Ottoman Empire becoming

the “other.”18 The “other” was seen as backward or uncivilized, almost inviting “help” from the

powerful outside.19 Westerners had very little understanding of the Orient and as a result Eastern

cultures were grouped into one general mass. The Orient became a stage and was confined in a

small box for it to seem “knowable” to Europeans.20

The artistic movement of Orientalism would limit the scope of the Orient while

diminishing it to a Western fantasy. This fantasy would include the sexualization of Eastern

women and it would manipulate the reflection of harems and Turkish society.

Sexualization and the Turkish Fantasy

Male artists historically contorted women to best please the male viewer, and with a

growing interest in Turkey they began to incorporate Turkish culture, or what they imagined it to

be, as a prop for their sexualized representation of women. Western women were themselves
17
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Vintage Books, 1979. 40
18
Shaw, Wendy. Possessors and Possessed, Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of History in the Late
Ottoman Empire . University of California Press, 2003. 120
19
Kirecci, Mehmet Akif. Decline Discourse and Self -Orientalization in the Writings of Al-Tahtāwī, Tāhā Husayn
and Ziya Gökalp: A Comparative Study of Modernization in Egypt and Turkey, 2007. 10
20
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Vintage Books, 1979. 50
8

victims of a distorted reflection, but the Turkish women in art were often completely imaginary

or dehumanized. This is the portrait of Turkish women that became engrained not only in the

Western psyche but eventually the Turkish psyche as well.

Western male artists began using Oriental elements to add theatricality or exoticism to

their works. They took their sexualized female nudes and used Turkish elements and visuals of

imagined harems as accessories in their paintings meant for the male gaze. The resulting

paintings are dangerous because they developed an image of harems and Muslim women without

ever seeing them. The majority of Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’ paintings fall into this

category. He had never traveled to the Near East and relied heavily on the letters from the Lady

Mary Wortley Montagu who had visited harems during her travels.21 This was often how the

descriptions of the Turkish women were transmitted. Western women took the mirror handed to

them by men and carried it with them into harems, using its distorted reflection to describe

Turkish women to those same men. Ingres combined what was written with his imagination to

make his exotic Oriental nudes. One of his most famous works is La Grande Odalisque (Figure

8) depicts a white woman reclining with her back to the viewer. An odalisque was a concubine in

a harem with a close connection to the Sultan.22 The painting is inaccurate as it displays a white

woman in what is meant as a Turkish setting and Ingres makes use of the male gaze by twisting

and elongating the woman’s spine in an unnatural curve clearly to position her as a sight for the

viewer.23 The painting also includes the accessories used by Western Orientalists to indicate the

Orient, including the turban and the peacock feathers. La Grande Odalisque is an excellent

example of when the Oriental is used as an exotic accessory.

21
Leppert, Richard D. The Nude: The Cultural Rhetoric of the Body in the Art of Western Modernity. Boulder,
Colo.: Westview Press, 106
22
Kahf, Mohja. Western Representations of the Muslim Woman : From Termagant to Odalisque. 1st ed. ACLS
Humanities E-Book. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999.
23
Leppert, Richard D. The Nude: The Cultural Rhetoric of the Body in the Art of Western Modernity. Boulder,
Colo.: Westview Press, 107
9

The sexualization of Turkish women was continued by artists such as Gérôme, whose

most shocking work is The Slave Market (Fig. 9) Gérôme specialized in art that was extremely

detailed and realistic making it appear like a photograph. His realism has a serious effect on the

presentation of Turkish culture because he makes everything appear as if it is painted exactly

how he saw it. In The Slave Market, he portrays a female slave being examined similar to how a

European would examine cattle. The buyer and the men surrounding her are fully clothed while

she is naked and facing the viewer. Through the work Gérôme invites the judgement of European

audiences while also allowing them to feel superior in their position as the “other.”24 This

judgment is similar to that found in Venus at Her Toilette and other works that employ the male

gaze. The invitation of judgment gives the viewer an excuse for viewing the art while also

feeling superior about their position as a man or a Westerner.

These imagined, sexualized women were built upon the foundation of how women were

presented in the West, but they were dehumanized and judged far beyond western women. The

artworks built representation that is currently still considered accurate by the public. They have

become so accepted that they were immortalized through Self-Orientalization.

Self-Orientalization

Beginning with Napoleon’s invasion in 1798 decades of Western influence and the

artworks by Europeans such as Ingres and Gérôme solidified the Ottoman image in history. As

the Ottoman Empire declined and opened itself further to the West, native Turks began to

internalize the art they were seeing in a process called Self-Orientalization in which Orientalism

combined with the self-image of Turks.

The decline of the Ottoman Empire and the process of Self-Orientalization are closely

linked. According to author Mehmet Akif Kirecci Self-Orientalization, “Is the process through
24
Ibid 120
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which intellectuals in Egypt and Turkey internalized the notion of decline.”25 The golden period

of the Ottoman Empire existed from 750-1258 and it was followed by an extended decline

sometimes referred to as the Arabic Middle Ages. Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt began the third

period of the empire’s history which was often referred to as the “liberal age” or a

“renaissance.”26 The invasion was seen as a rescue by Europeans, and in the mid-19th century the

Ottoman Empire earned the name “The Sick Man of Europe” which would dominate Western

perceptions of the Turks for generations.27

Intellectuals in the Ottoman Empire perceived the decline and set out to find ways of

improving their society. They did not accept all things Western outright; their goal was to

develop authority by finding a way to reverse their perceived decline.28 The way they chose to

counteract the decline was to cultivate elements from another successful culture and Europe at

the time was the most prominent example. Ottoman intellectuals fell into the role of the “other”

in the process of finding a solution to their perceived inferiority.29 Self-Orientalization is not only

the result of oppression inflicted by the West, it is a stance adopted by a people group in a search

for modernity when they believe themselves to be lacking.30

Self-Orientalization included the study and adoption of western education, and as a result

western art education. The West played a key role in the so-called “modernization” or

“renaissance” of Turkey and the transfer of Western values is now present in the representation

of Turkish women by Turks.

The Turkish Mirror

25
Kirecci, Mehmet Akif. Decline Discourse and Self -Orientalization in the Writings of Al-Tahtāwī, Tāhā Husayn
and Ziya Gökalp: A Comparative Study of Modernization in Egypt and Turkey, 2007. 10
26
Kirecci, Mehmet Akif. Decline Discourse and Self -Orientalization in the Writings of Al-Tahtāwī, Tāhā Husayn
and Ziya Gökalp: A Comparative Study of Modernization in Egypt and Turkey, 2007. 12
27
Ibid 13
28
Ibid 3
29
Ibid 4
30
Ibid 26
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The adoption of Western art is visible in the work of many Turkish artists including

Mihri Müşfik. Although she is a Turkish woman she grew up during the modernization of

Turkey and her works were created by looking through the mirror of the west. While she

employed Orientalist themes her work encourages an important discussion of how to balance

East and West and whether Turkish representation is more accurate when presented by native

artists.

Mihri Müşfik is one of the most famous female Turkish artists. The majority of work is

of female portraits, so she is also an excellent example of how the Western mirror influenced her

relationship with the Oriental. She played an important role in girl’s education and lived during a

time when women were beginning to enter more of the public sphere, but even so her European

training left a lasting impact on her work and her self-representation.

She was born in 1886 in Istanbul to a relatively wealthy family. Westernization was

engrained in her from an early age through her education. Western education for upper-class

girls included learning a foreign language, as well as learning the piano and painting.31 Her

parents were successful and well-versed in the arts and music. She fell in love with an Italian and

moved to Rome, and later Paris where she would spend the majority of her life.32 She was

appointed as an art teacher at Istanbul Teacher’s Training School for Girls and later in 1914 she

was hired as the director of the School of Fine Arts for Girls. In the late 19th and early 20th

centuries the education opportunities for Ottoman girls increased as the Ottoman concept of

domestic privacy began to loosen and more women were able to enter the public sphere.33 The

changing identity of these women also resulted in a shift in their representation through art.

31
Köksal, Duygu, and Anastasia Falierou, eds. A Social History of Late Ottoman Women: New
Perspectives. 54. Vol. 54. Leiden: Brill, 2013. 156
32
Ibid 152
33
Ibid 159
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Müşfik’s specialized in female portraits in a romantic style that she shared with fellow

Turkish artist Osman Hamdi Bey. She was trained under Italian Orientalist master Fausto Zonaro

who was renowned for his realist paintings of the life and history of the Ottoman Empire. 34 His

teaching mixed with her Turkish heritage made her work a culmination of both Western and

Eastern thought. Her portraits portray the “metamorphosis” of the Ottoman woman’s place in

modern society.35 Although she experimented with some Orientalist themes she did not limit her

subjects to the western fantasy of Orientalism. Most of her portraits show upper-class women

and not sexualized nudes. Woman with Veil (Fig. 10) is done in stark contrast to the prominently

displayed nudes of concubines. The woman appears to be upper-class with a pearl necklace and

earrings, but her wealth is not in the forefront and neither is her body as she is dressed in black

and her face is covered in a veil.36 She represents a modern woman, who is with the times,

entering the public sphere, and is not meant to be subject to the male gaze. Another work entitled

Her Sister Enise Hanim (Fig. 11) is as the title states a portrait of Müşfik’s sister. She is

depicted in entirely European dress. Both of these pieces’ style is not different from other

European portraits of the time. Müşfik is stepped outside of the sexualized stereotypes of Turkish

women, but she did not represent them outside of the Western lens.

Unlike the two previous pieces, Müşfik’s work Aynah Gözde (Fig 1) is rare in its direct,

unveiled reference to the Oriental fantasy. Because it differs drastically from her other

westernized portraits it provides commentary on the frozen reflection of Turkish women. In

Western Orientalism the Ottoman image is static, constantly using the same symbols such as

turbans or complex textiles as markers of the Orient. There is tension between the reflection of a

34
Nevin Özkan. "The Moments of Italian Presence in Constantinople - Istanbul" Studia Polensia 7, no. 1 (2018): 70.
35
Köksal, Duygu, and Anastasia Falierou, eds. A Social History of Late Ottoman Women: New
Perspectives. 54. Vol. 54. Leiden: Brill, 2013. 156
36
Ibid 163
13

mirror and the reflection of a painting.37 While a reflection in a mirror moves and changes with

time, a reflection in an artwork is permanent and has a lasting influence on the representation of

its subject. The intermediary nature of painting limits the accuracy of the image and plays a

direct role in constructing or deconstructing identity.38At first examination, Müşfik’s painting of

a nude woman seems to fit this standard of the static Oriental woman, however there are some

differences. The woman is wearing a robe and unlike the majority of paintings inspired by Venus

at her Toilette she is not openly presenting herself to the viewer. Anyah Gözde represents the

complexity of a Turkish woman painting an image typical of Orientalist fantasy. The work

evokes a sense of introspection as she, a native Turk, presents a reflection of herself as seen

through European eyes. The woman in the painting studies herself in the mirror and the

impression Müşfik gives is she is less focused on the male gaze and is more concerned with the

representation of a universally accepted art motif through the Turkish point of view. As a

Turkish artist, the work has more to say about her identity and the identity constructed for her as

a Turkish woman.

Mihri Müşfik worked to create portraits of modern women as they entered the public

sphere, but her work was primarily western. Because she was raised with a Western education

and spent much of her life in Europe, even though she was a Turkish woman she was unable to

approach the presentation of her fellow women outside of a Western lens. Her works give an

introspective view of Turkish women in society, but Westernization and Orientalism limited her

ability to present them outside of the framework already laid by European artists.

She is not the only Turkish artist to follow the framework of the west. Works such as

Nude by Ibrahim Çalli and Nude by Hasan Vecihi Bereketoglu show Turkish women supine,
37
Cohut, Maria-Silvia. "Before and Beyond the Glass: Women and Their Mirrors in the Literature
and Art of Nineteenth-Century Britain." 2018. 40
38
Ibid 41
14

naked, with invisible faces, surrounded by decorative textiles, and wearing turbans. They bare

testament to the permanent impact of the west on Turkish self-representation.

Conclusion

Self-Orientalization is based on a long and complex history. The process began with the

male gaze and the female nude of the west. With the introduction of Orientalism and the

European fascination with the Turks, the male gaze was transferred to work exhibiting Oriental

themes. These artworks diminished Turkish society and sexualized women by expanding on the

idea of the “other.” Turkish women became dehumanized and the accepted imagery became an

inaccurate, sexualized male fantasy. With the decline of the Ottoman Empire Turks questioned

their cultural practices and turned to the West for modernization, unwittingly taking the

expectations of the West and placing it upon themselves. As native Ottomans received western

education the western artistic representation of the East found a permanent place in the narrative

of Turkish women.

The history of Self-Orientalization is the story of passing down a distorted mirror. It

began with the mirror placed in the hand of Western women, and it was slowly passed down

through Orientalism and Self-Orientalism to Turkish artists. The current representation of

Turkish women is permanently colored by the west, marking an indelible history that not even a

Turkish artist can combat.

15

Illustrations

Fig. 1 Mihri Müşfik, Aynalı Gözde (The Sultan’s Favourite Fig. 2 Jan Gossaert Adam and Eve 1520
16

with Mirror) undated pastel on cardboard 85 x 68 cm oil on panel 169.2 x 112 cm National
Suna–İnan Kıraç Collection Gallery, London

Fig. 3 Agnolo Bronzino Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time Fig. 4 Hans Memling Vanity 1485 oil
1545 oil on canvas, 4’9” x 3’10” National Gallery, London painting on wood 20.2 x 13.1 cm

Fig. 5 Titian Venus with a Mirror 1555 oil on canvas Fig. 6 Rubens Morning Toilet of Venus 1612 oil
1055 x 1245 cm National Gallery of Art, Washington on panel, private collection
17

D.C.

Fig. 7 Carle van Loo Madame de Pompadour as Sultana Fig. 8 Ingres La Grande Odalisque 1814 oil on
1752 oil 120 x 127 cm State Hermitage Museum, St. canvas 88.9 x 162.56 cm, Louvre Museum.
Petersburg

Fig. 9 Gérôme The Slave Market 1866 Fig. 10 Mihri Müşfik Woman with Veil
oil on canvas 84.6 cm × 63.3 cm watercolor on paper, 44 x 29.5 cm Private
Clark Art Institute, Massachusetts Collection
18

Fig. 11 Mihri Müşfik, Her Sister Enise Hamin Fig. 12 Ibrahim Çalli Nude Undated Sakip Sabonci
pastel on carboard, 65 x 50.5 cm, Mimar Museum
Sinan Güzel Sanatlar University

Fig. 11 Hasan Vecihi Bereketoglu Nude undated, Sakip

Sabanci Museum
19

Works Cited

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: BBC and Penguin, 1972

Brett, John “The Specular Reflection Hypothesis, and its bearing on the Transit of Venus,”
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 37 (January 1877)

Cohut, Maria-Silvia. "Before and Beyond the Glass: Women and Their Mirrors in the Literature
and Art of Nineteenth-Century Britain." Proquest 2018.

Kahf, Mohja. Western Representations of the Muslim Woman : From Termagant to Odalisque.
1st ed. ACLS Humanities E-Book. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999.

Kirecci, Mehmet Akif. “Decline Discourse and Self -Orientalization in the Writings of Al-
Tahtāwī, Tāhā Husayn and Ziya Gökalp: A Comparative Study of Modernization in
Egypt and Turkey,” Proquest 2007.

Köksal, Duygu, and Anastasia Falierou, eds. A Social History of Late Ottoman Women: New
Perspectives. 54. Vol. 54. Leiden: Brill, 2013.

Leppert, Richard D. The Nude: The Cultural Rhetoric of the Body in the Art of Western
Modernity. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2007
20

Mulvey, Laura Visual and Other Pleasures, 2nd ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

“Ottoman Empire.” History.com, November 3, 2017.

https://www.history.com/topics/middle-east/ottoman-empire.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Vintage Books, 1979.

Shaw, Wendy. Possessors and Possessed, Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of
History in the Late Ottoman Empire. University of California Press, 2003