
The Darker Side of the Global Renaissance, or Othello in the Seraglio
Abstract
Literary and historical explorations in the global Renaissance studies of the last few decades have successfully revealed intense cross-cultural encounters, rich engagements, and material and discursive exchanges in the Mediterranean. Drawing on such studies, the talk will revisit Shakespeare’s Othello, as well as one its most recent appropriations, Othello in Seraglio: The Tragedy of Sümbül the Black Eunuch, “a coffee-house opera” composed by Mehmet Ali Sanlikol, within the early modern context of slavery and anti-black racism in the Ottoman Mediterranean. In doing so, the talk asks: what about the darker side of the global Renaissance?
Bio
Abdulhamit Arvas is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. His research and teaching focus on Early Modern English literature and culture, Shakespeare, comparative histories of sexuality and race, queer theory, cross-cultural encounters, and Islam in the Renaissance. Dr. Arvas is currently working on a book project, tentatively titled A Global Renaissance of Beautiful Boys: Sexuality and Race in Mediterranean Encounters, which explores representations of abducted boys in early modern English and Ottoman literatures. His publications have appeared in journals including English Literary Renaissance, Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies, Shakespeare Survey, postmedieval, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, and in edited collections such as The Postcolonial World, The Cambridge History of Gay and Lesbian Literature, England’s Asian Renaissance, and Trans Historical: Gender Plurality Before the Modern.

