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Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons™
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Near Eastern Languages and Societies
City University of New York (CUNY)
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Full-Text Articles in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Performing Modernity In Turkey: Conflicts Of Masculinity, Sexuality, And The Köçek Dancer, Brittany Giselle Haynes
Performing Modernity In Turkey: Conflicts Of Masculinity, Sexuality, And The Köçek Dancer, Brittany Giselle Haynes
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This thesis reexamines the history of the köçek dancer in Turkey and thereby opens modern heteronormative constructs of masculinity and sexuality to contestation, particularly as they have been symbolically embodied by the rural population of Anatolia. It traces the evolution of the köçek dancer from the early modern Ottoman Empire when the dancer embodied notions of divine love and the ideal of beauty as a young male object of adult men's desires. In the nineteenth century, perceptions of the köçek began to change, primarily among Ottoman elites, whose modernization efforts were influenced by the European gaze and travelers' Orientalist interpretations …