Education, fine arts and women in the context of Ottoman modernization: A study on Inas sanayi-i Nefise Mekteb-i Alisi (The high academy of fine arts for girls)

This treatise questions whether the Westernization attempts that began with the Imperial Edict of Reorganization (1839) and resumed during the Second Constitutional Era (1908-1918) were instrumental for the Ottoman Empire's ultimate goal of 'modernization' in the context of women's emancipation. The study presents a detailed survey of education reforms introduced throughout the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century as well as a critical analysis of how artistic taste and production evolved under Western influence in the Ottoman Empire. The author offers a comparative examination and an ontological breakdown of İnas Sanayi-i Nefise Mekteb-i Âlisi (The High Academy of Fine Arts for Girls), a sample institution singled out due to its intersectional position as a government-funded school providing fine arts education for women. The premise of this treatise is to deconstruct the high status granted to the school in current literature and to extend this argument towards a post-colonial/postmodern reading of Ottoman women's history by means of epistemological questioning developed after feminist methodologies initially proposed by Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock in the 1980s. Through a comprehensive analysis of archival documentation and data mustered during the research process, the author also attempts to initiate a debate on hierarchical class-gender relations in the context of Turkish modernization.