THE DUTIFUL DAUGHTERS OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE: PSYCHOSOCIAL TOPOLOGY OF THE BRITISH HOSPITAL IN SMYRNA
Vol.9, Issue 2, 2023, pp. 187-206 Full text
DOI: https://doi.org/10.33919/esnbu.23.2.3
Web of Science: 001131896300008
Authors:
1 Nurten Birlik https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4544-9595
2 Orkun Kocabıyık https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8498-2587
3 Hasan Baktır https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1078-8589
Affiliation:
1 Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Türkiye 014weej12
2 Akdeniz University, Antalya, Türkiye 01m59r132
3 Erciyes University, Kayseri, Türkiye 047g8vk19
Contributor roles
Conceptualization: N.B. (equal);
Data curation: N.B, O.K, H.B. (equal);
Investigation: H.B. (lead);
Methodology: N.B. (lead), O.K. (supporting);
Writing – original draft: N.B (lead);
Writing – review and editing O.K, H.B. (equal)
Abstract
Scholarship on the accounts of the Western travellers about the Ottoman Empire focuses on some commonly known writers only, and Ismeer, or Smyrna, and its British hospital in 1855, by a lady (M. Nicol) remains neglected. It is a diary written by a lady-nurse, Martha Nicol, who worked in the British hospital in Smyrna, during the Crimean War. She is tightly bound in with the imperial ideology and by reconceptualising the space in the hospital, the lady-nurses help the British soldiers achieve a sense of continuity between their home back in England and the host culture about which they know very little. By playing a formative role to transpose this hospital to a homely space in a foreign territory, the lady-nurses function as psychic and cultural stabilisers. This essay aims to decipher how the hospital space functions as an ideological heterotopia of deviance, and how the lady-nurses contribute to its power to inspire the idea of "at-homeness" in the soldiers and retain the ideological structuring mechanisms in this distant location by exploring the textual evidence in the book. This essay will also explore how power and ideology are contextualised in the psychosocial topology of the hospital.
Keywords: topology, Smyrna, travel literature, Martha Nicol, heterotopia
Article history:
Submitted: 24 June 2023
Reviewed: 10 August 2023
Accepted: 29 August 2023
Published: 20 December 2023
Citation (APA):
Birlik, N., Kocabıyık, O., & Baktır, H. (2023). The Dutiful Daughters of the British Empire: Psychosocial Topology of The British Hospital in Smyrna. English Studies at NBU, 9(2), 187-206. https://doi.org/10.33919/esnbu.23.2.3
Copyright © 2023 Nurten Birlik, Orkun Kocabıyık, Hasan Baktır
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Review:
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Review Content: Undisclosed
Review Verified on Publons
2. Reviewer's name: Undisclosed
Review Content: Undisclosed
Review Verified on Publons
Handling Editor: Boris Naimushin, PhD, New Bularian University
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