New College Alumna Ayla Samli Provides Insight into the Role of Women in Modern Turkey

(December 16, 2010) – On December 14, the Gender Studies Program presented a talk by New College alumna Ayla Samli entitled “Genderations: Negotiating Identities Through the Urban Turkish Ceyiz,” in which she explored traditional gender roles in Turkey and how the individual identity and personal choices of modern women are expressed in the urban ceyiz, similar to the hope chest.

According to Samli, marriage is the most important achievement for Turkish girls as it is representative of the transformation into adulthood. “It symbolizes the future with new negotiations and new lives,” said Samli, who is a doctoral candidate in Cultural Anthropology at Rice University. The ceyiz includes such items as domestic textiles, bridal lingerie and new appliances. Samli explained that traditionally, the mother carefully crafts the items in the ceyiz, which she passes down to her daughter upon marriage.

Samli, who is of Turkish heritage, pointed out the tension between mothers and daughters in the ceyiz. She experienced this tension herself upon a visit to Turkey when she witnessed her cousin’s refusal to accept the ceyiz her mother had presented to her. Samli saw her cousin’s distaste for and dismissal of the ceyiz as a rebellion against a certain prescribed femininity and traditional gender roles.

In her research on the ceyiz, Samli looks at how young educated women take part in the wedding process, asserting their individual power through their selection and accumulation of things. She asks the following questions: Is there room for an individual identity for Turkish women, who have historically been given two distinct roles: wife and mother? Is it possible to be modern and traditional at the same time? Are brides’ selection strategies moving beyond the material to include other choices, such as who they will marry? Building on her study of the ceyiz, Samli sees future applications of her work in looking at how the hope chest in Europe signifies Turkish identity abroad and in issues of personal freedom in contraception and reproductive health.

After graduating from New College in 2000, Samli worked as an editor and writer in a custom publishing house for two years. As an Alumna Fellow in Spring 2010, Samli taught a course on “Gender, Islam, and Modernity in Turkey,” and this fall she offered a tutorial on “Spirit Possession and Subjectivity.” In 2011, Samli will begin a teaching postdoctoral fellowship with the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Wake Forest University, where she will teach a course on “Gender and Islam.”

For more information about the Gender Studies program at New College, please contact 941-487-4645