Masculine Aesthetics & Sports in the Ottoman Empire | Professor Murat Yildiz

Modern sports did not just change how people played; they fundamentally rewired how they lived, looked, and identified within a rapidly transforming world. The conversation with Murat Yildiz, an assosciate professor of history at Skidmore College, explores the high-stakes intersection of physical culture, social status, and the 19th-century quest for a new global aesthetic. Elite educational and military institutions utilized gymnastics and disciplined exercise to mold an upwardly mobile generation, using sports to reconfigure traditional social hierarchies. Meanwhile, the rise of photography helped normalize and spread a uniform corporal aesthetic, allowing young men from diverse backgrounds to adopt a standardized look of proper modern masculinity. Tracing a vibrant athletic awakening, the discussion follows how sporting culture rippled across urban centers, from Istanbul to Cairo, Beirut, and Jerusalem, signaling a deeper transformation in community, selfhood, and the shift from indigenous traditions to professionalized international play.