This paper seeks to analyze 13th century poet Mevlana Celaleddin-i Muhammed Rumi’s role in modern Turkey. Composed of twelve interviews conducted in Istanbul, Turkey during 2019, the report focuses on two events as starting points for an ethnographic research project. The first event, the Gezi Park protests, occurred in the summer of 2013 when Istanbul saw demonstrations demanding civic freedoms sparked by the attempted destruction of Istanbul’s Taksim Gezi Park. Secondly, a flurry of small protests across the Middle East in the summer of 2016 followed Turkey’s joint UNESCO claim on Rumi’s seminal work, stirring an international discussion about which country - if any - had a right to the poet, Rumi (1207-1273).

Touching on Turkish popular culture, Sufism, the Mevlevi Order, and Rumi’s legacy, the paper analyses 12 interviews with a cross section of Turkish citizens and residents with varying levels of interest in Rumi. These interviews’ findings which reflect popular reception of Rumi’s legacy are juxtaposed with the government’s implementation of his image. Addressing how Rumi’s legacy is represented in Turkey, in the participants’ lives, and through his translated works, the paper draws on the interview recordings in combination with scholarly and documentary sources.

In summary, the project seeks to answer the following question: In today’s Turkey, what role does Rumi’s legacy play in Istanbul’s society, and how is that cultural and societal sense of ownership specific to Turkey? Hypothesizing that a strong cultural presence associated with Rumi exists in modern Turkey, this paper uses field research and on-site evidence to explore issues of cultural ownership and legacy. Providing insight into the reinterpretation and uses of historical figures, these findings are applicable to studies of cultural translation and revitalized legacies in the globalized world.

Amidst the turn of the twentieth century, few women were accounted for witnessing the advancement of archaeology, later known as the "Golden Age'' of Egyptology. In fact, much of the source material by women in this period have been misplaced or yet to be published. Mrs. Emma B. Andrews wrote nineteen volumes of diaries while observing the unearthing of over twenty tombs in the Valley of the Kings. The Emma B. Andrews Diary Project seeks to introduce Mrs. Andrews's works—and other unpublished historical documents composed by women during the time—to modern platforms, such as an online reader and social media. The transcribed texts are encoded into XML, using Text Encoding Initiative Guidelines, and the structural and contextual elements are denoted. The TEI documents are currently being used to create a comprehensive database for scholars and students alike to read the compositions of the lesser-known women of Egyptology. Accompanying the transcribed texts are biographies to equip the readers with additional context. However, we interns stepped further into this project by attempting to answer a fundamental question—how did Mrs. Andrews's accounts of her day-to-day interactions reflect the manner she viewed her life, and therefore herself? Guided by this question, we used research methods involving an analysis of Mrs. Andrews's language and identification via XML-TEI of the various contextual elements referenced—the people, places, hotels, and boats she encountered. These components were also cross-evaluated with further sources, including a sentimental analysis tool, to provide supplemental information to our study. After converging Mrs. Andrews's life history with recognized research in memory retrieval, we have noted observations on how her writing reveals her distinct perspective of the world and how her past may have influenced that point of view.