(Self-)representations of women at the dawn of a nation state: the autobiographies of Selma Ekrem and Halide Edib

Official URL: https://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b2586142_(Table of contents)

This thesis explores the question of how Halide Edib and Selma Ekrem assert their gendered and nationalized agencies through Memoirs and Unveiled: The Autobiography of a Turkish Girl, their respective autobiographical works written in English and set in the transition period between the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic. Through a textual analysis with reference to the contexts which the narratives refer to, and the context within which they were written, how the textual (self-)representations interplay with the official nation state ideology of the time regarding the leap from an "Ottoman past" to "Turkish identity", and "modern Turkish womanhood" was investigated. The main argument is that both women were contradicting with the image of "the daughters of the Republic", and demonstrate their autobiographical writing the complex, contradictory experiences of women that official history did not account for.