The Emmy Noether Research Group Reaching the People are delighted to welcome their newest member, Daniel Kolland, as a PhD Candidate and Research Assistant. Daniel Kolland's research engages with globally negotiated concepts of ‘newness’ and historicity at the fin-de-siècle through the lens of Ottoman Turkish intellectual and press history. 

His dissertation traces the philosophical, literary, and news content of the Istanbul-based illustrated weekly Servet-i Fünûn (Wealth of Applied Sciences; 1891-1919; 1924-1944). Taking as point of departure the explicitly global publishing program of the weekly, which made it a unique window to the world for its Ottoman readers, this study analyzes how this global imaginary was constitutive for Turkish negotiations of modernity, and how this coverage reproduced, or undermined, colonialist hierarchies and Eurocentric visions of global order. The project is especially interested in the language and concepts used in this global coverage such as “civilization,” “evolution,” or “progress,” which underwrote, or questioned, this order.

The group are very excited about the new perspectives and approaches which Kolland brings to the group and the prospect of collaborating during the months to come.