Northwestern University
October 25-27, 2024
Registration and Donations

Conference Schedule

Friday, 10/25

Location: 1800 Sherman Ave., Evanston, IL 60201

8:30 AM – 10:00 AM CST · OTSA Board Meeting

Room 3001

10:30 AM – 10:45 AM CST · Welcome Remarks and Orientation

Room 3029

11:00 AM – 12:30 PM CST · Panel Session 1

Ottoman Diasporas in the Americas

Room 3029

• Yiorgio Topalidis, Flagler College — "'There is no such thing as Ottoman Greeks!': Lessons Learned from the Whitening Process of Ottoman Greek Immigrants in the US"
• Kent Schull, Binghamton University — "The Mormon-Armenian Diaspora in the Western United States: Immigration and Resettlement Struggles against Exploitation (1884–1922)"
• Stacy Fahrenthold, UC Davis — "Picketing the Syrian shop: Syrian American garment workers and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) of New York City"
• Devin Naar, University of Washington — "'Toward the Emancipation of All Peoples': Ottoman Socialism in the Windy City"
• Chair and Discussant: Amy Singer, Brandeis University

Entangled Histories of Labor and Capital in the Ottoman Empire

Room 3003

• Anıl Aşkın, Brown University — "Between City, Field, and Mine: Class Struggles in Eighteenth-Century Central Anatolia (1740–1780)"
• Emre Can Dağlıoğlu, Stanford University — "Proletariat under the International Financial Control: The 1910 Strike of Female Silk Workers in the Heart of Ottoman Sericulture"
• Önder Akgül, Northwestern University — "Debt, Labor, and the Making of a Global Hinterland in Late Ottoman Western Anatolia"
• Ellis Garey, Brown University — "Movement Regulation as Labor Discipline in Late Ottoman Greater Syria"
• Chair and Discussant: Elizabeth Williams, University of Massachusetts-Lowell

12:30 PM – 1:30 PM CST · Lunch Break

1:30 PM – 3:00 PM CST · Panel Session 2

Revisiting Tribes and Tribalism in the Ottoman Empire

Room 3003

• Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer, New York University — "From Aşiret to Tribe, Oymak to Clan: The Politics of Labeling in Sixteenth-Century Texts and Their Translations"
• *Stefan Winter, University of Quebec/Koç University — "Commander of the Steppe Warriors of the Age: The Desert Emir (Çöl Beyi) of Northern Syria and the Ottoman State"
• Habib Saçmalı, Marmara University — "Managing Nomadism: Ottoman Strategies for Forced Resettlement in the Early Eighteenth Century"
• *Yonca Köksal, Koç University — "Reswan Settlement in Nineteenth-Century Central Anatolia: A Study of Governance, Mobility, and Livestock Trade"
• Discussant: Baki Tezcan, University of California-Davis

Cultural Hegemony in Turkey's Domestic Politics

Room 3029

• Kenan Sharpe, Northwestern University — "The Shifting Character of Culture War: From Left-Right Struggle to Secular-Religious Lifestyle Debate"
• Lisel Hintz, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies — "Recipe for (New) Turkey: Cooking Shows as Conservative Gender Edutainment in Cultural Hegemony Struggles"
• Hikmet Kocamaner, University of North Carolina — "Cultural Hegemony and Populist Narratives: The Case of Kızılcık Şerbet"
• Yağmur Karakaya, Yale University — "The 'Failed Cultural Hegemony' of the AKP: An Interrogation through the Museum of Conquest"
• Chair and Discussant: Meltem Müftüler, Sabancı University

3:15 PM – 4:30 PM CST · Panel Session 3

Memory after a Decade of War

Room 3029

• Matthew Ghazarian, Yale University — "Memory and Archive After 1915"
• Yiğit Akın, Ohio State University — "'Alternative Archive?': A Methodological Discussion about Exploring the Memory of the Great War in Post-Ottoman Anatolia"
• Rachel Baron-Bloch, University of California-Irvine — "Remembering Rhodes: Post-Ottoman Ethnographic Memory on Camera"
• Cevat Dargin, Columbia University — "Remembering Rescue: Memoirs of Armenian Genocide Survivors Smuggled to Safety by Kurds"
• Discussant: Melanie Tanelian, University of Michigan
• Chair: Lerna Ekmekçioğlu, MIT

Borders, Mobility, and Identity Formation in the Late Ottoman Empire and Its Aftermath

Room 3003

• Fatma Esen, Georgetown University — "The Impact of Tobacco Fields on Mobility and Identity in the Late Ottoman Black Sea"
• Irmak Senşöz, Princeton University — "The Making of Mobility Controls in Late Ottoman Palestine (1882–1913)"
• Mary Tezak, Georgetown University — "Yenice to Nusaybin: Sites of Overlap During World War I"
• Diana Yayolan, Georgetown University — "Mobility as an Everyday Experience of Ottoman Armenian Deportees in the Deserts of Syrian Jazira and Forests of Dersim Between 1915 and 1918"
• Chair: Deren Ertaş, Harvard University

4:45 PM – 5:45 PM CST · Special Session 1

Room 3029

"A Turkish Circle in the Pacific Northwest? The Tradition of Turkish and Ottoman Studies at the University of Washington Reconsidered"

• K. Mehmet Kentel, Leiden University
• Selim S. Kuru, University of Washington
• Senem Aslan, Bates College
• *William Bamber, University of Toronto
• Discussant: Reşat Kasaba, University of Washington

6:00 PM – 8:00 PM CST · Reception / Award Ceremony

Room 3029 / Suite 3-000 Lobby

Saturday, 10/26

Location: Harris Hall, 1881 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208

9:00 AM – 10:00 AM CST · Business Meeting

Room 108

10:30 AM – 12:00 PM CST · Panel Session 4

Ottoman Racialization and Its Afterlives: Cultural and Multilingual Perspectives

Room 107

• Berkay Uluç, University of Michigan — "Nahda, Tanzimat, 'Aesthetics': A Racial Discourse"
• Erik Blackthorne-O'Barr, Columbia University — "Pure Lineage: Iran and Racecraft on the Ottoman/Turkish Stage"
• Deanna Cachoian-Schanz, University of Pennsylvania — "From Kin to Kind: The Hayırsızada Dog Massacre and the Mediation of the 'Human'"
• Hakem Al-Rustom, University of Michigan — "Confessional Ethnicities in Post-Ottoman Turkey: The Armenian Case"
• Chair and Discussant: Mostafa Minawi, Cornell University

Imperial Center to Nationalizing Borderlands: Ottoman Europe, 1900–1922

Room L07

• Pınar Odabaşı Taşçı, The University of Akron — "Edirne during World War I: Borderlands and Belonging at the End of Empire"
• Jacob Daniels, University of Texas — "The Eye of the Storm: Borderland Violence and the Jews of Edirne, 1912–1918"
• *Pelin Tiğlay — "The Ideological Borderlands of the IMARO: Imagining Ottoman Balkans as a National, Socialist and Imperial Center (1893–1912)"
• Chair and Discussant: Leyla Amzi-Erdoğdular

12:00 PM – 1:30 PM CST · Lunch Break

1:30 PM – 3:00 PM CST · Panel Session 5

Who is Afraid of the Balkans?

Room 107

• Ana Sekulic, University of Pittsburgh — "The Friar Figure: Beyond the In-Between in Ottoman Studies"
• Edin Hajdarpasic, Loyola University-Chicago — "The Specter of Europe in Ottoman and Balkan Scholarship"
• Leyla Amzi Erdoğdular, Rutgers University-Newark — "The Ottoman Balkans: Between Sources and Temporalities"
• Harun Buljina — "Between Bosnia and Bosporus: Historiographies and Prosopographies of Islamic Reform in Late and Post-Ottoman Bosnia-Herzegovina"
• Chair and Discussant: Uğur Peçe, Lehigh University

Ottoman Imperial Belonging and Order: New Histories of Law and Punishment

Room L07

• Hazal Özdemir, University of Michigan — "Redefining Land, Privilege and Imperial Belonging at the End of Empire"
• Lâle Can, The City College of New York — "Exile as Late Ottoman Imperial Politics"
• Camille Cole, Illinois State University — "'Following': Dependence and Belonging in Late Ottoman Iraq"
• Ayşe Polat, Columbia University — "'A Farewell to Arms': Economies of Violence in the Golan Heights, 1878–1908"
• Chair and Discussant: Nora Barakat, Stanford University

3:15 PM – 4:30 PM CST · Panel Session 6

War, Weapons, and Imperial Transformations Across the Ottoman and Spanish Empires

Room 107

• James Tallon, Lewis University — "Revolution, Reform, and Nationalism: in the Albanian Provinces of the late Ottoman Empire"
• Wayne Bowen, University of Central Florida — "The Fall and Rise and Fall of the Spanish and Ottoman Empires, 1700–1924"
• Veysel Simşek, McGill University — "Ottoman Arms Production and Imports, 1826–1839"
• Chair and Discussant: Kate Dannies, Miami University

Islam in AKP's "New Turkey": Intersecting Discourses of Religion, Identity, and Governance

Room L07

• Seda Baykal, University of Pittsburgh — "The Resilience and Transformation of the Ottoman Ulema: A Genealogical Study from Empire to Republic"
• Fatma Murat Elmacıoğlu, Bilkent University — "Redefining Urban Based on Islam: The Concept of Şehir in the Works of Lütfi Bergen"
• Zeynep Önal, Bilkent University — "A Muslim Feminist NGO: The Case of Havle Women's Association in Turkey"

4:45 PM – 5:45 PM CST · Special Session 2

Room 108

A Roundtable Celebrating Mark Stein's 27 years with H-TURK's heavy hitters and you

As Mark Stein passes the baton after 27 years as H-TURK coordinator and editor, we join with him, Alan Fischer, Ernie Tucker, Andras Riedlmayer, Victor Ostapchuk, and Günhan Börekçi for a roundtable dialogue: From TSA to OTSA: How H-Turk Got Here, and How We Imagine and Actualize the Unfolding of its Future. We look forward to celebrating, being together, and hearing your vital input and voices.

6:00 PM – 8:00 PM CST · Reception

Room 108

Sunday, 10/27

Location: Harris Hall, 1881 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208

9:00 AM – 10:15 AM CST · Panel Session 7

Interwar Turkey in Global Context

Room 107

• Nesi Altaras, Stanford University — "Anchoring the Post-Ottoman Sephardi World: Republican Istanbul as a global Jewish Center"
• Kubra Sağır, EHESS — "From Would-be-state Diplomacy to Rebel Diplomacy: The International Relations and Diplomatic Activities of Kurdish Political Actors, 1918–1938"
• *Emmanuel Szurek, EHESS — "Branding the Revolution, Framing Turcology: The Creation of the Centre d'études turques (Sorbonne, 1935)"
• Aytek Sönder Alpan, Simon Fraser University — "A forgotten small-scale exchange of populations between Turkey and Bulgaria in 1935: How many times could one village avoid being exchanged?"
• Discussant: Lerna Ekmekçioğlu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Chair: Emre Can Dağlıoğu, Stanford University

10:30 AM – 12:00 PM CST · Panel Session 8

Beyond the Madrasa: Sites of Science and Religion in Ottoman History

Room 107

• Nathaniel Moses, Harvard University — "The Hindiyeh Canal and the Ecology of Value in Nineteenth Century Iraq"
• *Zeynep Küleli, Johns Hopkins University — "Divine Blooms: Cultural and Symbolic Meanings of Tulips in Early Modern Ottoman Floriculture"
• Dana Nabulsi, Harvard University — "Healing the Body and Soul: Medical Missionary Rivalry in 19th Century Ottoman Syria"
• Chair: Alexander Barna, Northwestern University

Economic Knowledge and Policy in the Ottoman Arab Provinces in the Long Nineteenth Century

Room L07

• Murat Bozluolcay, University of Chicago — "Keeping an Eye on Trade: Production of Economic Knowledge in Early-Nineteenth Century Syria"
• *Zoe Griffith, Baruch College — "Who Knew? Information-Gathering and Imperial Reforms in Late-Eighteenth Century Egypt"
• Elizabeth Williams, University of Massachusetts-Lowell — "Documenting Sovereignty: The Stakes of Economic Knowledge Production in Late-Nineteenth Century Syria and Aleppo"
• Chair and Discussant: Aaron Jakes, University of Chicago

12:15 PM – 1:45 PM CST · Final Session and Roundtable

Gender and Sexuality in Ottoman and Turkish Studies: The State of the Field and New Approaches

Room 108

• Kate Dannies, Miami University — "Breadwinner Soldiers: Gender, Family, and the Body in the Ottoman First World War"
• Abdulhamit Arvas, University of Pennsylvania — "The Homoerotics of Empire Before Modernity"
• Emre Keser, University of California-Santa Cruz — "Herculine Barbin in the Ottoman Empire: Gendering Monsters, Historicizing Sex"
• Chair and Discussant: Seçil Yılmaz, University of Pennsylvania

Note: Participants marked with an asterisk (*) will be participating virtually.

Sponsors

Special thanks to our sponsors for making the OTSA 2024 Conference possible:

• Department of History, Binghamton University
• Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University
• Sakıp Sabancı Center for Turkish Studies, Columbia University
• Keyman Modern Turkish Studies Program, Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, Northwestern University
• Department of Near Eastern Studies, Münir Ertegün Foundation, Princeton University
• Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Stanford University
• Kemal Karpat Center for Turkish Studies, University of Wisconsin–Madison