Education can cease to be a showcase for political projects and start serving women's lives only when the agency of women in their own education is acknowledged. In this paper I have addressed issues concerning harem education to emphasise that possible solutions to issues of girls' education require an awareness concerning the history of girls' education in different geographies. In this article, this agency is pursued in the homosocial production of knowledge in the harem, which is an exoticised space. Questioning the limitations and benefits of the concept of the harem is especially important in understanding processes such as the accommodation of public practices of education in women's homes. Using Foucault's concept of heterotopia, the harem is contextualised to shed light upon its liberating and dominating aspects, as a sphere where public and private practices of education converge.
Women's quarters in the historical hammam have had an ongoing impact on women's public lives in the Mediterranean in general and in Turkey in particular. Although the hammam is usually considered a Muslim space, its Roman roots connect its customers to other histories. In this respect, a comparative social and historical analysis of women's quarters of the hammam queries the so-called Islamic city as a standard and unchanging space distinct from its European counterparts. In this article, a hammam in Ankara, Ş engül Hamamı, is presented as a changing space where women negotiate their status, social positions and safety in an urban environment. Women's usage of this space as such is achieved after they meet several challenges on their way to the hammam. These challenges involve discourses of safety and danger, purity and filth, as well as dress and undress, which all seem dichotomous but at the same time converge on different levels. As a result, these challenges contribute to the daily usage of the city by women as well as to how they negotiate the historical hammam.
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