Recent Winners (2017-2023)

2023 Award and Prize Winners

The OTSA Undergraduate Scholarship

The prize committee was chaired by Nilüfer Hatemi (Princeton); the members were Efe Murat Balıkçıoğlu (Wellesley), Gregory Key (Binghamton), and Yücel Yanıkdağ (Virginia). The Board liaison was Selim Kuru (Univ. of Washington). Dr. Balıkçıoğlu presented the prize on behalf of the committee.

The winner of the scholarship was Ailya LeFlore, a senior majoring in International Relations and Global Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Ailya used the scholarship to support her participation in a summer internship at Sabancı University’s Istanbul Policy Center (IPS), a leading global policy think tank operating since 2001. In addition to her internship in conflict resolution and mediation under the supervision of research senior specialist Can Tülüş Türk at IPC, Ailya also improved her already advanced Turkish language skills during her time in Istanbul.

The OTSA Graduate Student Paper Prize

The prize committee was chaired by Sarah Fischer (American Univ.); the members were Aime Genell (Boston Univ.) and Solen Sanli Vasquez (Santa Rosa Junior College). The Board liaison was Ceyda Karamürsel (SOAS). Dr. Fischer presented the prize on behalf of the committee.

The winner was Sertaç Kaya Şen (Brown University) for his paper “Marshaling Development: Turkish Thrace in the Interwar Years.” Şen’s paper is a strongly documented argument that Turkish leaders set out to define Eastern Thrace during the interwar period through a mix of diplomatic efforts, physical fortifications, population migration, and military reorganization. Şen demonstrates how, when combined, these efforts resulted in turning the formerly weakly protected region into a strong defensive line that kept Turkey and its citizens out of World War II.

The OTSA Vangelis Kechriotis Memorial Travel Grant

The grant committee was chaired by Tolga Cora (Boğaziçi Univ.); the members were Dzovinar Derderian (UC Berkeley), Ayşe Ozil (Sabancı Univ.), and Socrates Petmezas (Univ. of Crete). The Board liaison was Ayfer Bartu-Candan (Boğaziçi Univ.). Dr. Derderian was going to present the prize on behalf of the committee. As she could not be present, her congratulatory note was read by Baki Tezcan.

The winner was Myrsini Manney-Kalogera (University of Arizona). Ms. Manney-Kalogera made important interventions in both Greek Studies and Ottoman Studies, and grounded her work in theories of nationalism and network theory, as well as family and household studies. The members of the prize committee were all impressed by her work.

The OTSA Digital Ottoman and Turkish Studies Award

This award was established this year thanks to a generous donation by Miletos, Inc., the company behind Muteferriqa, a searchable database of Ottoman Turkish printed books, journals, and newspapers. The inaugural award committee was chaired by Chris Gratien (Univ. of Virginia); the members were Elias Kolovos (Univ. of Crete) and Mehmet Kuru (Sabancı Univ.). The board liaison was Can Gümüş (Boğaziçi Univ.). The award was presented by Dr. Kuru.

The winner was Efe Erünal. Dr. Kuru noted that the committee reviewed a number of strong applications and reached a unanimous decision to award the prize to Efe Erünal, who recently completed his Ph.D. at  Koç University. Dr. Erünal’s dissertation applied digital methods of analysis and visualization to an impressive range of sources concerning the economic and social transformation of the Bursa region during the 19th century. His submission for this prize proposed promising research concerning spatial, social, and cultural attributes of toponym change in Turkey, Bulgaria, and Greece since the late Ottoman period as well as mapping of population and urbanization in late Ottoman Bursa using georeferenced historical maps. Dr. Erünal’s work stood out for the relevance of his methods to longstanding questions in the socioeconomic history of the Ottoman Empire and its contribution to an emerging body of digital scholarship in Ottoman studies concerned with spatial analysis. We congratulate Dr. Erünal for his selection among a competitive pool of talented young scholars.

The OTSA Article Prize

The prize committee was chaired by Milena Methodieva (Univ. of Toronto); the members were Josh Carney (American Univ. of Beirut) and Nir Shafir (Univ. of California, San Diego). The board liaison was Alexis Wick (Koç Univ.). The committee split the prize between two co-winners who were announced by Dr. Methodieva.

One of the co-winners was Zeynep Devrim Gürsel for her article “Classifying the Cartozians: Rethinking the Politics of Visibility Alongside Ottoman Subjecthood and American Citizenship,” which was published in Photographies, Vol 15 (3), Fall 2022. Zeynep Gürsel’s article explores the drama of expatriation and the construction of belonging as revealed through photographs, advertisements, legal records, and news stories. This investigation begins in the Ottoman archives with a photo, and follows the route of its subjects across the globe, employing rich image analysis and ethnographic work alongside extensive digging in a variety of archives. The path of one family offers a glimpse into the pressures felt by Armenians in the late Ottoman Empire, as well as the possibilities and limitations for constructing racial identity in the US in the early 20th century. This exemplary essay is both a deeply engaging narrative of discovery and a showcase for multidisciplinary research technique.  

The other co-winner was Samuel Dolbee for his article “Empire on the Edge: Desert, Nomads, and the Making of an Ottoman Provincial Border,” which was published in American Historical Review, vol. 127, no. 1 (2022), 129-158. Samuel Dolbee’s article explores the role of borders in the late Ottoman Empire, detailing the relationship between Ottoman governmental goals, local political and economic actors, and environmental realities in the desert area south of Mardin. The article highlights the role of a group that has often remained marginal in historical accounts – nomads. In this story the Shammar nomads play an outsized role, making use of political and environmental borders in ways that frustrated Ottoman reform and taxation efforts. Dolbee draws on a rich blend of primary and secondary sources in this account that is at once specialized and historically insightful while also being accessible to a wide audience and of contemporary interest.

The OTSA Book Prize

The prize committee was chaired by Murat Metinsoy (Istanbul Univ.); the members were Virginia Aksan (McMaster Univ.) and Burak Gürel (Koç Univ.). The Board liaison was Benjamin Fortna (Univ. of Arizona). The committee awarded an honorary mention alongside the prize both of which were announced by Dr. Aksan.

Andrew Hammond received an honorary mention for his “Late Ottoman Origins of Modern Islamic Thought: Turkish and Egyptian Thinkers on the Disruption of Islamic Knowledge.” (Cambridge University Press, 2022). Andrew Hammond’s “Late Ottoman Origins of Modern Islamic Thought” tells the story of three Islamic scholars who chose Cairo over Constantinople as the radical secularist agenda took hold in the emerging Turkish Republic. In addition to three substantial biographies of influential figures in the development of Turkish Islamic politics, the book contributes to a growing body of work investigating the late Ottoman Cairo-Constantinople intellectual and cultural life. Following a primer on late Ottoman Islam, the author turns to Mehmed Akif, well-known creator of the Turkish national anthem; Mustafa Sabri, last chief mufti of the Ottomans, and Mehmed Zahid Kevseri, Sabri’s deputy to the Ilmiye, all of whom wrote extensively. Akif, like Said Nursi, arguably the best known of the Republican Islamists, wrote in Turkish while Sabri and Kevseri chose to continue the use of Arabic. The remainder of the book explores the immersion of the three Ottoman Islamists in the late nineteenth century scholarly debates on Islam, from humanist to salafi, most by intellectuals much more well-known to this audience, such as Abduh, Mawdudi, Iqbal, Qutb, and Albani. True to the subtitle of the book, Turkish and Egyptian Thinkers on the Disruption of Islamic Knowledge, Hammond’s account of the debates is deeply informative and a highly engaging read.

The winner of the OTSA Book Prize for 2023 was Nilay Özok-Gündoğan with her book “The Kurdish Nobility in the Ottoman Empire: Loyalty, Autonomy, and Privilege” (Edinburgh University Press, 2022). In “The Kurdish Nobility in the Ottoman Empire,” Dr. Özok-Gündoğan provides an empirically well-grounded and theoretically robust analysis of the transformation of Kurdish landed elites in the Ottoman Empire from the sixteenth century to the late nineteenth century, with a specific focus on the case of Palu. The book begins by meticulously exploring the hereditary economic and political privileges granted by the Ottoman state to the Kurdish elite in the sixteenth century. Subsequently, it delves into two major transformations that profoundly influenced class, ethnicity, and central-local relations in Palu. As Özok-Gündoğan shows, the first transformation occurred in the 1720s and 1730s when the Ottoman state increased control over the Keban and Ergani mines, fragmenting the Kurdish elites’ control over land. The more significant transformation took place in the nineteenth century. Concurrent with the Ottoman state’s efforts to undermine the Kurdish elites and the empire-wide transition toward private landownership, the state confiscated the local elites’ lands after the Weşin Massacre of 1848, facilitating their sale in the market. This shift from hereditary control to private property set in motion a series of events that had far-reaching consequences, profoundly impacting local class and ethnic relations. Armenian and Kurdish sharecroppers began challenging their landlords. Local Armenians, connected to the Armenian financial bourgeoisie of Istanbul, sought legal ownership of these lands, leading to intense conflicts with the Kurdish elites, who defended their hereditary privileges, culminating in the 1895 massacres of local Armenians. Dr. Özok-Gündoğan’s book offers a compelling analysis of the political economy of class, ethnic, and state-society relations in Ottoman Kurdistan. More importantly, by connecting empirical findings with theoretical concepts such as autonomy, nobility, and feudalism and challenging the conventional divide between the Ottomans and European empires, Özok-Gündoğan highlights the Ottoman Empire’s relevance to longstanding debates on feudalism and nobility in comparative-historical analyses of empires.

2022 Award and Prize Winners

AATT The James W. Redhouse Student Prize Competition for Best Progress in the Turkish Language

• Austin Dimitris Gkoulimaris (UT Austin)
• Juliet (Jae) Weller (University of Michigan, University Wisconsin-Madison)
• Liam Declan Savage (University of Washington)
• Nitisha Ponnappan (NYU)   

AATT Walter G. Andrews Ottoman Turkish Translation Award

Abdelrahman Mahmoud (Ph.D. candidate, Harvard University) Advanced Level. Click here to read his work.

AATT Norman Itzkowitz Turkish Short Story Award

• Michael Aboutboul (UCLA), Advanced Level,‘Geniş Yol’
• Negar Banisafar (University of Toronto), Elemementary/ Intermediate Level, ‘İsim Şehir Oyunu“

OTSA Undergraduate Scholarship

The OTSA Undergraduate Scholarship was awarded by a committee comprised of Aslıhan Gürbüzel (chair), James Ryan, Kameliya Atanasova, and Nilüfer Hatemi. Selim Kuru was the Board liaison for this committee. The winner was Michael Aboutboul, a UCLA undergraduate student who plays the cümbüş (as well as the ney): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yymRp5iX32Y.

OTSA Graduate Student Paper Prize

The OTSA Graduate Student Paper Prize Committee members were Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky (chair), Burcu Karahan, and Sarah Fischer. Benjamin Fortna served as the Board liaison. The winner was Christopher Whitehead, a graduate student at Ohio State University. In the words of Vladimir, Christopher’s paper “The Early Career of Köprülü Mehmed Pasha: An Archival Reconstruction” examines the rise to power of the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire in 1656–61 and the founder of the Köprülü dynasty, which came to dominate Ottoman politics for the rest of the seventeenth century. The paper is based on impressive archival research and mastery of secondary literature. The committee found this article to be scrupulous in its reexamination of Ottoman biographical narratives. Whitehead vividly demonstrates what it took to become a successful Ottoman administrator and will present his paper at our W’OTSAp meeting in March.

The OTSA Graduate Student Paper Prize selection committee also awarded an honorable mention to Hülya Delihüseyinoğlu (Boğaziçi University). As Vladimir stated during his presentation in Denver, Hülya’s paper “Governing Armenian Schools Through Ambiguity” examines the evolution of Turkish governance of Armenian minority schools, based on interview-based ethnography. She turns existing assumptions about how the Turkish state governs on their head by arguing that the AKP government does not need to pursue heavy-handed control over Turkey’s minorities. Instead, the state relies on complex existing laws and neoliberal economic policies that mandate competition starting with education in minority schools. Hülya will present her paper at a W’OTSAp meeting in 2023 as well.

The OTSA Vangelis Kechriotis Memorial Travel Grant

The membership of the Vangelis Kechriotis Memorial Travel Grant committee included Eyal Ginio (chair), Michelle Campos, Tolga Cora, and Malte Fuhrmann. Ayfer Bartu Candan was the Board liaison. The winner was Elif Kevser Özer Albayrak (Boğaziçi University). Her multi-dimensional study on the forced migration of Greeks in 1964-65 from Istanbul (Apelasis) and its memory among their descendants living today in Greece is very well related to Vangelis’ academic work. Her aim to challenge both Greek and Turkish national historiographies and to offer a new understanding of this migration and its background is promising. It is situated right at the heart of Vangelis’ writing on the post-1908 Rum politics in the Ottoman Empire. Özer Albayrak’s mastering of both Turkish and Greek is impressive. She employs both conceptual and theoretical approaches reflecting her acquaintance with studies of nationalism, forced emigration, collective memory, and mass media in both their Turkish and Greek contexts. Her use of different archival sources (state documents and press reviews) and oral history is equally promising. Özer Albayrak will present her work at a W’OTSAp meeting later this year.

OTSA Yavuz Sezer Article Prize

The inaugural Yavuz Sezer Article Prize in the History of Architecture and the Urban Environment selection committee included Çiğdem Kafescioğlu (chair), Ümit Fırat Açıkgöz, and Deniz Türker. Shirine Hamadeh was the Board liaison. The winner was Namık Erkal (TED University) for his article “Reserved Abundance: State Granaries of Early Modern Istanbul,” which was published in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians in 2020. As Çiğdem stated during the presentation of the prize, Erkal’s “Reserved Abundance” explores the state granaries of Early Modern Istanbul at the intersection of architecture, urban economy, and imperial bureaucracy. Erkal offers a comprehensive and nuanced account of the state granaries within their urban context, supporting his narrative with maps, plans, and drawings mostly produced by himself. He draws on impressively meticulous research in textual and visual sources, while putting early modern Istanbul into a global context through apposite comparisons with different cases ranging from Venice to India. The article makes a notable contribution to the urban history of Istanbul by providing a richly textured narrative of a key urban institution that has barely figured in scholarship so far. The committee is pleased that the first Yavuz Sezer Award in the History of Architecture and the Urban Environment goes to a study that will be an essential reference for years to come. I am grateful to Namık Erkal, who will present his work at a W’OTSAp meeting later this year, for donating the monetary portion of the prize to the OTSA Yavuz Sezer Article Prize fund.

OTSA Book Prize

The OTSA Book Prize committee was constituted by Can Açıksöz (chair), Mostafa Minawi, and Banu Bargu. Aslı Bâli served as the Board liaison. The committee awarded an honorary mention and divided the prize between two winners. You will be able to get to know all three books in W’OTSAp meetings later this year.

Ümit Kurt received an honorary mention for his book The Armenians of Aintab: The Economics of Genocide in an Ottoman Province (Harvard University Press, 2021). As Can stated during the prize ceremony, a welcome addition to the burgeoning scholarship on the micro-dynamics of the Armenian Genocide, Kurt’s meticulously researched book takes the provincial town of Aintab as a case study in the economics of genocide. It shows how the expulsion of Armenians and the redistribution of their plundered wealth helped consolidate the provincial elite formation, and on a broader scale, efforts at nation and national economy-building. It sheds light on how economic dispossession and primitive accumulation unfolded before, during and after the genocide. Clearly illustrating the economic motives of the perpetrators, the book narrates how genocide profiteers hid behind national causes. More importantly, it enhances our temporal and political understanding of the genocide as a process that extends into the occupation and republican periods, and continues in the present day Turkey. Some of the most striking parts of the book for Açıksöz were the moments when Kurt tells us the history of particular buildings, owned by Armenians, which now serve as cafes or Turkish heritage sites. Aside from its academic contributions, this is a work of scholarly courage. Not only because of the political ramifications of writing on the Armenian Genocide as a Turkish citizen. The author himself was born and grew up in Antep. The book opens up with a personal anecdote about how the author discovered the violent erasure of the city’s rich Armenian past. This personal connection makes the painful history told in the book intimately haunting.

The 2022 OTSA Book Prize winners, in alphabetical order of their last names, were Faisal Husain (Penn State) for Rivers of the Sultan: The Tigris and Euphrates in the Ottoman Empire (Oxford University Press, 2021) and Murat Metinsoy (İstanbul Üniversitesi) for The Power of the People: Everyday Resistance and Dissent in the Making of Modern Turkey, 1923-38 (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

Mostafa introduced Faisal’s book with these words: “The award goes to a book that managed to bring meaningful engagement with environmental history, the history of technology and science, and the political history of early modern Ottoman rule together in a beautifully, passionately, and concisely written book. It is also a book about a part of the empire which has often been understood in the Ottoman context and thus in our collective imagination, as one that is important because it was part of the periphery and frontier. ‘Sora sora Bağdad bulunur’ goes the famous Turkish saying, in which the Iraqi provinces were thought of as distant, exotic, and peripheral. This book demonstrates, how through the harnessing of the water of the Dicle and Furat, the Ottoman rulers were in fact deeply invested in the incorporation of these eastern provinces, and encourages us, to rethink our notions of how we approach and study provinces and to go against our impulse as a field to continuous centering of cities physically closer to metropole or the notion of “western facing” cities on the water, from Alexandria to Beirut to Izmir. Focusing on the river basins of the eastern provinces promises to unlock our collective imagination, and hopefully, spur more research to reconsider Ottoman history of the Iraqis provinces as worthy of study, much like we have recently seen wonderful studies on the Balkans.”

Can stated that he found in Murat Metinsoy’s book a meticulously researched historical analysis of the early decades of the Turkish republic. “This is a book that really challenges and changes the way we understand the early republican decades. Instead of reproducing top-down historical narratives, the book advances a history from below approach and seeks to take as its subjects ordinary people and their experiences. It documents the daily and micro struggles and everyday resistance of peasants, workers, and other marginalized segments of the society. So, instead of focusing on formal politics, Metinsoy examines the infrapolitical fault lines of formal politics, the practices that are not quite political enough to be perceived as such. It looks at tax-evasion, smuggling, banditry, petty theft, absenteeism, petitioning, gossiping, rumors, resort to magic, etc. And it does so by employing a very rich and innovative set of sources including archival records, novels, oral history, newspapers, etc. This is a transformative work. Honestly, we were baffled that it had not been written before. What makes this book uniquely invaluable is that it opens up many questions and research trajectories. Metinsoy’s work clears a path for a whole new body of research that I look forward to reading.”

2021 Prize and Scholarship Winners

AATT James Redhouse Student Prize

Recipient: Michael Barron (The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania)

Instructor: Altan Öztürk

Recipient: Sam Breazeale (University of Michigan)

Instructor: Nilay Sevinç

AATT Walter G. Andrews Ottoman Turkish Translation Award

(Advanced) Recipient: Morgan Tufan (Stanford University)

(Beginner/Intermediate) Recipient: Gong Chen (Princeton University)

AATT Norman Itzkowitz Turkish Short Story Award

(Advanced) Recipient: Gong Chen (Princeton University)

(Beginner/Intermediate) Recipient: Laurens Pieter Boomsma (Princeton University)  

OTSA Halide Edip Adıvar Scholarship

Recipient: Sierra Klemann (University of California, Berkeley)

Recipient: Tristan Sam (Georgetown University)

Committee Members: Yeşim Bayar (St. Lawrence University) (chair), Hale Yılmaz (Southern Illinois University at Carbondale), Ahmet Aktürk (Georgia Southern University), Aslıhan Gürbüzel (McGill University), Senem Aslan (Bates College), OTSA Board member liaison

Sierra Klemann is a Biology major at UC Berkeley. She will be attending the University of Arizona’s Arizona in Turkey program.

Tristin Sam is studying International Politics along with a minor in Turkish at Georgetown University. He will be studying Turkish at the Dilmer Language School in Istanbul.

OTSA Sydney Fisher Graduate Student Paper Prize

Winner: Sharon Mizbani (Yale University), “Furnishing the Ottoman Empire: Crystal Objects in Sacred Spaces”

Committee Members: Kimberly Hart (SUNY Buffalo State College) (chair), Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky (University of California, Santa Barbara), Gamze Cavdar (Colorado State University), Will Smiley (University of New Hampshire), OTSA Board member liaison

Sharon Mizbani’s paper offers contrasting perspectives on the use of glassware in sacred Ottoman spaces. Mizbani highlights the viewpoints of westerners who came from the countries where the objects were manufactured, and of Ottomans and other Muslims who experienced the pieces in situ.

OTSA Vangelis Kechriotis Memorial Travel Grant

Winner: Dimitrios Stergiopoulos (University of California San Diego)

Committee Members: Panagiotis Poulos (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens) (chair), Emily Neumeier (Temple University), Etienne Charrière (Bilkent University), Eyal Ginio (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Shirine Hamadeh (Koç University), OTSA Board member liaison

Dimitrios Stergiopoulos’s research focuses on the engagement of non-Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire in the state modernizing process and to its implications in the constitution of political and national identities in the late Ottoman era.

OTSA Ömer Lütfi Barkan Article Prize

Winner: Zozan Pehlivan (University of Minnesota), “El Niño and the Nomads: Global Climate, Local Environment, and the Crisis of Pastoralism in Late Ottoman Kurdistan,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of Orient 63 (2020).

Honorable Mention: Ana Sekulić (Max Weber Fellow, European University Institute), “From a Legal Proof to a Historical Fact: Trajectories of an Ottoman Document in a Franciscan Monastery, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 62 (2019).

Committee Members: Faisal Husain (Penn State University) (chair), Melissa Bilal (University of California, Los Angeles), Milena Methodieva (University of Toronto), Aslı Bali (University of California, Los Angeles), OTSA Board member liaison

Zozan Pehlivan’s article studies episodes of extreme drought and severe cold in eastern Anatolia during the second half of the 19th century. It details the devastating implications of those climatic conditions on livestock and the nomadic populations that relied on them, causing shortages of water and forage, the death of animals, human migration, and struggles over scare natural resources.

Ana Sekulić’s article provides a history of a single document written in Ottoman Turkish and preserved in the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Fojnica, one of the three oldest Franciscan monasteries in Bosnia. The article traces the arduous journey of the document, from its issuance in the mid-16th century, and the many roles it assumed: as a legal proof in the courts of law, as an index entry in archival catalogues, and as a footnote in 20th century history books.

OTSA M. Fuad Köprülü Book Prize

Sacrificial Limbs tells the story of victims, the other victims of the Kurdish conflict in south-eastern Anatolia, the young soldiers who are sent to the region to become heroes of the fatherland and who return mutilated, incapacitated, and socially emasculated. Those returning are pressed into propaganda roles for the benefit of political actors, all the while knowing and feeling that they have in many ways been abandoned by the state, and often their loyalties transfer to more right-wing, anti-establishment viewpoints.

2020 Prize Winners

2020 Redhouse Prize for Best Progress in Turkish

• Madison Maxey (Stanford University, student of Saadet Ebru Ergül) 
• Spencer Cook (Georgetown University, student of Dr. Sylvia Önder)
• Liana Malinovsky (University of Michigan, student of Nilay Sevinç)

Committee members: Melike Yücel-Koç and Nilay Sevinç

2020 AATT Walter G. Andrews Ottoman Turkish Translation Award
Winner:
Caleb Shelburne (Harvard University)

Committee members: M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, Benjamin Fortna, Gregory Key, Nilüfer Hatemi, and Beyza Lorenz

2020 Vangelis Kechriotis Memorial Travel Grant:
Winner:  
Kaleb Herman Adney, “Rebellion on the White Sea: ‘Oriental Tobacco’ and the Habits of Eastern Medierranean Capital, c. 1864-1912”

Adney’s innovative proposal is impressive in terms of its analytic scope and of the material to be examined. By looking at entanglements between Ottoman Macedonia, Greece, and Egypt, it brings together a multi-sited research set-up involving multiple languages and unexplored archival content, as well as a careful re-reading of the supposedly well-known story of tobacco trade and smuggling in the Eastern Mediterranean. Trans-regional in its outlook, the project highlights the roles of provincial non-Muslim elites and their increasingly complex legal and illicit commercial networks, with important implications for the economic history of the late Ottoman Empire. The Kechriotis Travel Grant 2020 would enable Adney to travel to London and explore archival records at the National Archives.

Committee Chair: Ramazan Hakkı Öktan
Committee Members: Devi Mays, Panagiotis Poulos, and Barbara Henning

2020 Sydney N. Fisher Graduate Student Paper Prize:
Winner: 
Erik Blackthorne-O’Barr, “Journals of the Plague Year: The Ottoman Press and the Istanbul Cholera Outbreak of 1871” 

In this paper, the 1871 “non-event” cholera outbreak in Istanbul is explored through press accounts. These accounts from three papers, one in English, a second in French, and a third in Ottoman, show how the writing (and reading) communities of these papers engaged with orientalist constructions of disease.  As we know all too well, who gets sick, why, and where are political questions.  Exploring a “non-event” allows the author to focus on the political discourses and prejudices about the disease, and how the public, or rather, publics are rhetorically constructed (p. 25), since the actual event, in hindsight, seems unremarkable.  The narrative of the paper is clear and readable; its chronological structure aids the author in presenting the twists and turns in the various papers’ reactions to each other and unfolding events.  The paper contains solid analysis of rhetoric and probable publisher motivation in the textual examples presented and displays sophisticated use of sources in three languages.  Overall, it makes a clear argument, and the topic is timely and relatable.  We liked how Erik chose an event of disease that soon became forgotten, which helps offset the need to focus on what happened and allows us more analytical space to consider how the disease became “fact and symbol (p. 6).” Another strength of the paper is that we learn about how the disease was understood, analyzed, and interpreted through three distinct communities and their newspapers, as well as through individuals who wrote letters to these papers, providing not only community-based views but also distinctive individual voices and perspectives.

Committee Chair: Jeannette Okur
Committee Members:James Ryan, Kimberly Hart, and Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano

2020 OTSA Book Prize
Winner: Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh, The Missing Pages: the Modern Life of a Medieval Manuscript from Genocide to Justice (Stanford University Press, 2019)

Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh’s book traces the absorbing tale and life story of an Armenian manuscript, the Zeytun Gospels—or, more specifically, its eight prefatory pages of  Canon Tables, illuminated by the thirteenth-century painter Toros Roslin and severed from the main text sometime after the First World War.  Missing from public view for decades, the Canon Tables resurfaced in 1994 and became the subject of a lawsuit filed in 2010 against the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, which was accused of housing a cultural artifact looted from the Armenian Genocide.  Starting with this contemporary flashpoint, Watenpaugh looks back at the history of the manuscript and ponders questions about who has the right to act as custodian for artwork so intimately bound up with historical trauma and displacement.  Each part of her study introduces a location, person, or event that represented a significant turning point in the history of the Canon Tables.  The reader travels through time, from the thirteenth to the twenty-first century, and across space, from Hromkla in medieval Cilicia, to Zeytun, Marash, and Aleppo in the Ottoman Empire, to Soviet Yerevan, and finally to New York and Los Angeles.  Following its long journey, Watenpaugh shows us the many lives that the manuscript has led.  It has served as holy book, art object, national icon, and commodity on the international art market.  She thus reveals how artifacts labeled as ‘art’ are not merely neutral signifiers of aesthetic value, but can act as vessels of human memory, identity, and trauma.  Or as Watenpaugh puts it, they can become ‘survivor objects’ in their own right.

Readers will appreciate its moving and evocative prose, which will appeal to lay and academic audiences alike.  Not least among the book’s virtues is its uncommon range.  It fruitfully engages scholarship not only in the field of art history, but also archaeology, medieval and Ottoman history, museum studies, genocide studies, and above all, public history.  More than a remarkable contribution to Ottoman and Turkish studies, The Missing Pages speaks to wider debates about art, memory, and social trauma.  It sets an exemplary standard for the transnational and multidisciplinary study of visual heritage and cultural survival.

Committee Chair: James Grehan
Committee Members: Erdağ Göknar and Nina Ergin

2020 Halide Edip Adıvar Scholarship Competition

No award was made in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic and related uncertainties about travel.
Committee chair: Yeşim Bayar

2019 Prize Winners

2019 Redhouse Student Prize for Best Progress in the Turkish Language
Sophia Mauro (Georgetown University, student of Zeynep Gür)
Hazem Saleh (University of Texas at Austin, student of Jeannette Okur)
Sulayman Qazi (University of Michigan, student of Nilay Sevinç)
Simone Salman (UCLA, student of Beyza Lorenz)
Committee members:  Roberta Micallef and Melike Yücel 

---

2019 Vangelis Kechriotis Memorial Travel Grant for Doctoral Research
Winner:  Fredrick Walter Lorenz,  “An Empire of Frontiers: Between Migrant and State in the Late Ottoman Empire, 1856-1914”

Lorenz’s clearly articulated and ambitious dissertation research is relevant not only for Balkan Studies but also for Ottoman and Middle Eastern Studies more broadly. It is uniquely transregional, focusing on migration from the Balkans, Mediterranean islands, and Russian Black Sea regions into Ottoman territories in the late empire. It engages with multiple sources and perspectives, including the impact of migration on transformations in political governance and identity, as well as the understudied dimension of migrant agency through the historical source of migrant petitions. Lorenz’s application reflects the extensive linguistic skills (Ottoman, Turkish, Balkan, and Romance languages) and preparatory research necessary to complete the proposed research. The Kechriotis travel grant supported a 2019 summer research trip to Istanbul and the Ottoman Archives of the Prime Minister’s Office to examine diverse documents relevant to his project.
Committee chair: Maureen Barbara Jackson
Committee members: Leyla Erdoğdular, Ramazan Hakki Öztan, and Natalie Rothman

---

2019 Sidney N. Fisher Graduate Paper Prize
Winner:  Ahmet Yusuf Yüksek, “Sufis and the Sufis Lodges in Istanbul in the Late Nineteenth Century: A Spatial Inquiry.”

Yüksek’s paper combines an extensive but previously underutilized archival source, the İstanbul Tekkeleri Nüfus Vuku’atı Defteri, with an innovative use of Geographic Information Systems, with the overall goal of understanding the social and spatial positioning of Sufi lodges in late nineteenth-century Istanbul. Yüksek’s use of both textual and technological tools is deeply informed by a knowledge of the secondary literature and of the background context necessary to understand Sufism in Istanbul. By mapping different lodges, Yüksek is able to argue that they were “part and parcel of Ottoman urban life,” and that their absence in certain neighborhoods both reveals and reflects the particular nature of those areas. The committee found the paper original, well-organized, and interesting to read, as well as methodologically innovative. 
Committee chair: Will Smiley.
Committee members: Yiğit Akın, Jeannette Okur, and Leslie Peirce.

---

2019 Ömer Lutfi Barkan Article Prize
Winner:  Amy Mills, “The Cultural Politics of Ethnic Nationalism: Turkish Urbanism in Occupied Istanbul (1918-1923),” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 107 (5): 1179-1193.

In her article entitled “The Cultural Geopolitics of Ethnic Nationalism: Turkish Urbanism in Occupied Istanbul,” Amy Mills examines expressions of ethnic urbanism through caricatures, poems, plays, essays, jokes and songs as appeared in humor magazines. The award committee has found the author’s choice of humor magazines to study the question of identity in Occupied Istanbul innovative. Humor magazines were significant because they were widely disseminated and also accessible to those who couldn’t read. Thus, the cultural geopolitics of ethnic nationalism is examined not through the lens of the state or its institutions, but through humor, behaviors, feelings, and identities. The award committee has particularly praised the fact that the article has a broad appeal going beyond the historical period under examination and having implications for contemporary Turkey as it discusses anxieties about one’s own identity and also emphasizes the mutually inseparable nature of Rum and Turkish Istanbulite identities.
Committee chair:  Gamze Çavdar 
Committee member:  Kyle Evered, Roger Deal, and Chris Low  

---

2019 M. Fuad Köprülü Book Prize  
Winner:  Heather L. Ferguson, The Proper Order of Things: Language, Power, and Law in Ottoman Administrative Discourses (Stanford University Press, 2018)

Committee chair:  Ben Fortna
Committee members: Alan Mikhail and Onur Bakıner

---

2019 Halide Edip Adıvar Scholarship  
Winner:  Hannah Ni’Shuilleabhain, Northwestern University.

As a student pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Journalism at Northwestern University, she is also pursuing a minor in Middle East and North African Studies. Aspiring to be an audio journalist either based in Turkey or covering Turkey, she attended the Turkish language program at the Boğaziçi University in summer 2019.
Committee chair: Emine Evered 
Committee members: Sylvia Önder, Yeşim Bayar, and Fariba Zarinebaf.

2018 Prize Winners

2018 M. Fuad Köprülü Book Prize
Winner:  Alan Mikhail, Under Osman’s Tree: The Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and Environmental History (University of Chicago Press, 2017).
Synopsis from the University of Chicago Press website:

“Osman, the founder of the Ottoman Empire, had a dream in which a tree sprouted from his navel. As the tree grew, its shade covered the earth; as Osman’s empire grew, it, too, covered the earth. This is the most widely accepted foundation myth of the longest-lasting empire in the history of Islam, and offers a telling clue to its unique legacy. Underlying every aspect of the Ottoman Empire’s epic history—from its founding around 1300 to its end in the twentieth century—is its successful management of natural resources. Under Osman’s Tree analyzes this rich environmental history to understand the most remarkable qualities of the Ottoman Empire—its longevity, politics, economy, and society.
The early modern Middle East was the world’s most crucial zone of connection and interaction. Accordingly, the Ottoman Empire’s many varied environments affected and were affected by global trade, climate, and disease. From down in the mud of Egypt’s canals to up in the treetops of Anatolia, Alan Mikhail tackles major aspects of the Middle East’s environmental history: natural resource management, climate, human and animal labor, energy, water control, disease, and politics. He also points to some of the ways in which the region’s dominant religious tradition, Islam, has understood and related to the natural world. Marrying environmental and Ottoman history, Under Osman’s Tree offers a bold new interpretation of the past five hundred years of Middle Eastern history.”

---

2018 Honorable Mention, M. Fuad Köprülü Book Prize:
Side Emre (Texas A&M University) for Ibrahim-i Gulshani and the Khalwati-Gulshani Order: Power Brokers in Egypt (Brill, 2017).

“In Power Brokers in Ottoman Egypt, Side Emre documents the biography of Ibrahim-i Gulshani and the history of the Khalwati-Gulshani order of dervishes (c. 1440-1600). Set mainly in Mamluk-Egypt, and in the century following the region’s conquest by the Ottomans, this book analyzes sociopolitical dialogues at the geographic peripheries of an empire through the actions of and official responses to the Gulshaniyya network.
Emre argues that the members of this Sufi order exerted social and political leverage and contributed significantly to the political culture of the empire and Egypt. The Gulshanis are uncovered as unexpected figures among the roster of influential players, in contrast with empire-centered historiographies that depict Ottoman ruling and learned elites as the primary shapers and narrators of the fates of conquered provinces and peoples. The Gulshanis’ political and cultural legacy is situated within an analysis of perceptions of Sufism in the early modern Ottoman world.”

---

2018 Sydney N. Fisher Graduate Student Paper Prize
Yusuf Ziya Karabıçak, PhD Candidate, McGill University and EHESS, for his paper “Sovereignty and Legitimacy in an Age of Revolutions: The Ottoman Perspective, 1791-1815”Halide Edip Adıvar Scholarship
Farouk Alabed, human biology and psychology major, University of Kansas.

2018 Redhouse Student Prize for Best Progress in the Turkish Language
Ian Riley, Indiana University
Loujeine Boutar, University of Pennsylvania
Irene Kuo, Stanford University
Grace Frazor, University of Texas in AustinV

2018 Vangelis Kechriotis Memorial Travel Grant
Winner: Yusuf Ziya Karabıçak, PhD Candidate, McGill University and EHESS

---

2017 Prize Winners

2017 M. Fuad Köprülü Book Prize
Winner: Stefan Winter, A History of the Alawis From Medieval Aleppo to the Turkish Republic (Princeton University Press, 2016)

“The ‘Alawis, or Alawites, are a prominent religious minority in northern Syria, Lebanon, and southern Turkey, best known today for enjoying disproportionate political power in war-torn Syria. In this book, Stefan Winter offers a complete history of the community, from the birth of the ‘Alawi (Nusayri) sect in the tenth century to just after World War I, the establishment of the French mandate over Syria, and the early years of the Turkish republic. Winter draws on a wealth of Ottoman archival records and other sources to show that the ‘Alawis were not historically persecuted as is often claimed, but rather were a fundamental part of Syrian and Turkish provincial society.
Winter argues that far from being excluded on the basis of their religion, the ‘Alawis were in fact fully integrated into the provincial administrative order. Profiting from the economic development of the coastal highlands, particularly in the Ottoman period, they fostered a new class of local notables and tribal leaders, participated in the modernizing educational, political, and military reforms of the nineteenth century, and expanded their area of settlement beyond its traditional mountain borders to emerge from centuries of Sunni imperial rule as a bona fide sectarian community.
Using an impressive array of primary materials spanning nearly ten centuries, A History of the ‘Alawis provides a crucial new narrative about the development of ‘Alawi society.”

---

2017 Ömer Lütfi Barkan Article Prize
Winner: Faisal Husain (Georgetown University), “Changes in the Euphrates River: Ecology and Politics in a Rural Ottoman Periphery, 1687-1702,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 47, no. 1 (Summer 2016)
Honorable Mention: Ebru Aykut (Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University), “Toxic Murder, Female Poisoners, and the Question of Agency at the Late Ottoman Law Courts, 1840-1908,” Journal of Women’s History, Vol. 28, no. 3 (Fall 2016).

2017 Sydney N. Fisher Graduate Student Paper Prize
Matthew Sharpe, Ph.D. student, University of Pennsylvania.

2017 Halide Edip Adıvar Scholarship
Elizabeth Nelson, UT Austin.

2017 Redhouse Student Prize for Best Progress in the Turkish Language
Kevin Chau, Georgetown University
Perry Keziah, University of Washington

2017 Vangelis Kechriotis Memorial Travel Grant
Sada Payır, Oxford University
Yeliz Teber, Oxford University