The History of OTSA as Told by Its Presidents: Interviews with past (Ottoman and) Turkish Studies Association Presidents

This series of interviews spotlights the professional comments and personal memories of the people who established our organization, led it, and fostered its growth and development over the past fifty years. We turn to them as historians of ourselves and our profession, to capture their perspective on our changing field of Ottoman and Turkish Studies in North America, and around the world. The interviews began online by Zoom during the 2020-2021 COVID winter, conducted by Amy Singer in Cambridge, MA, and Baki Tezcan in Berkeley, CA, themselves immediate past and current presidents of OTSA. The interviews were taped and edited for time and flow. Although we sent each person a list of questions so as to have some common themes running through the interviews, you will, we hope, enjoy the digressions and memories that enliven each one. We’re very grateful to those with whom we’ve already spoken, to those with whom we’ll be speaking as we resume this project, and to the University of California, Davis, for the technical support we received.

Episode 1 – Joseph S. Szyliowicz (President, 1974-76)

Joseph S. Szyliowicz served as the second president of the Turkish Studies Association (1974-1976), after its founding president, Kemal Karpat (1971-74), whom we lost in 2019. Szyliowicz was born in Belgium and came to the U.S. in 1948. He studied at the University of Denver, Johns Hopkins University, and received his PhD from Columbia University in 1961. After a long and very varied career at the University of Denver (1965-2016), Szyliowicz is today retired and active.

His publications include:  Political change in rural Turkey: Erdemli (Mouton and Co., 1966); A political analysis of student activism: the Turkish case (Sage Publications, 1972), Education and Modernization in the Middle East (Cornell University Press, 1973) and Technology and International Affairs (Praeger, 1981), as well as edited volumes and articles on Turkey; the Middle East; terrorism and its impact on the U.S; and the role of technology in national development. He developed a particular interest in mega projects, especially those in the transportation sector.

To watch the interview conducted on October 26, 2020, please click this link.

Episode 2 – Alan Fisher (President, 1982-84)

After Joseph Szyliowicz (President, 1974-76) and before Alan Fisher, (O)TSA was led by Stanford J. Shaw (1976-78; d. 2006), İlhan Başgöz (1978-80; d. 2021), Roderic H. Davison (1980-81; d. 1996), and Walter Weiker (1981-82; d. 1997).

Alan Fisher earned a BA from DePauw University (1961) which included one year at Robert College (1958-59), an MA and Certificate from Columbia University’s Russian and Soviet Institute (1964), and a PhD from Columbia in 1967 under the direction of Tibor Halasi-Kun, Marc Raeff and one year with Enver Ziya Karal in Russian and Ottoman History, Osmanlıca, and Volga Tatarca (with Gustav Burbiel). His entire academic career was at Michigan State University from 1966 to 2003, retiring in that year. In addition to (O)TSA, which he led from 1982 to 1984, he was the Chairman of the Institute of Turkish Studies from 1997 to 2002.

His publications include several books: The Russian Annexation of the Crimea, 1772-1783 (Cambridge Univ Press, 1970); The Crimean Tatars (Hoover Institution Press, 1978); collections of his articles and essays – Between Russians, Ottomans and Turks: Crimea and Crimean Tatars (Isis, 1998) and A Precarious Balance: Conflict, Trade and Diplomacy on the Russian-Ottoman Frontier (Isis, 1999). His second book was translated into Turkish as Kırım Tatarları (Istanbul: Selenge Yayınları, 2009).

In his last years at Michigan State, he developed several online history courses for his department (Islamic History, Ottoman History, World History), continuing his interest in digital learning from his development and hosting of (O)TSA-L as a www list; this grew into H-TURK. He also helped his wife, Carol, develop a similar list for Islamic Art History, H-ISLAMART – both of these were members of the general Humanities list family originally hosted at Michigan State.

Alan Fisher’s connections to Ottoman and Turkish Studies predate him. His mother, Elizabeth Scipio Fisher, was born in Istanbul in 1914. Her father was the first director of the Engineering School at Robert College from 1912 to 1942. As for Alan Fisher’s father, Sydney, he was a professor of Middle Eastern history at Ohio State University, and had been a tutor early on at Robert College in the late 1920s (OTSA’s graduate student paper prize was named after him). Though Alan moved in quite different directions, influenced greatly by his wife Carol, a historian of Ottoman art (PhD under direction of Priscilla Soucek). Her dissertation, if you ask Alan, was much more interesting than his – The Pictorial Cycle of the Six-Volume Siyer-i Nebi of Sultan Murad III.

To watch the interview conducted on September 30, 2020, please click this link.

Episode 3 – William Griswold (President, 1988-90)

After Alan Fisher (President, 1982-84) and before William Griswold, [O]TSA was led by Gustav Bayerle (1984-86; d. 2016) and Donald Quataert (1986-88; d. 2011).

William J. Griswold was president of the Turkish Studies Association from 1988-1990. Griswold pivoted to Ottoman studies after returning to university after a two-year stint in the U.S. Navy. He attended graduate school at UCLA during a growth era there in Middle Eastern and Ottoman studies, completing his dissertation in 1966. During his long career at Colorado State University, which coincided with the boom in liberal arts education in the U.S., Griswold invested extensive energies in a constructive strengthening of the university. In addition to his university work, Griswold was involved in initiatives to enhance the study and teaching of the Middle East in the U.S., in both higher and secondary education.

Griswold’s publications include The Great Anatolian Rebellion, 1000-1020/1591-1611 (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 1983), an early contribution to the study of the Celali revolts, which has long posed interpretive challenges to Ottoman historians. Griswold was also a prolific reviewer and contributor to OTSA and MESA publications.

To watch the interview conducted on October 19, 2020, please click this link.

Episode 4 – Carter Findley (President, 1990-92)

Carter V. Findley, emeritus Humanities Distinguished Professor in the History Department at Ohio State University, was president of the Turkish Studies Association from 1990 to 1992. Findley, educated at Yale (BA) and then Harvard (PhD), has been a significant force in maintaining and expanding Ottoman studies at OSU, meanwhile also co-founding the university’s world history program. He also served as president of the World History Association (2000-2002).

Findley’s numerous publications are grounded most broadly in later Ottoman history, beginning from his early monographs: Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte, 1789-1922 (1980) and Ottoman Civil Officialdom: A Social History (1989). However, he has also written on broader topics in The Turks in World History (2005); Twentieth-Century World (2010); Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity: A History, 1789-2007 (2010). Findley’s most recent book is the lavishly illustrated volume Enlightenng Europe on Islam and the Ottomans: Mouradgea d’Ohsson and His Masterpiece (2019). All of these have been translated into Turkish.

To watch the interview conducted on December 16, 2021, please click this link.

Episode 5 – Sarah Atiş (President, 1992-94)

Sarah Moment Atiş earned her A.B. degree from Bryn Mawr College and M.A. from The University of Michigan after which she studied at Istanbul University where, at the suggestion of Prof. Dr. Mehmet Kaplan, she read Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s Beş Şehir, and became interested in his work. She completed her Ph.D.degree at The University of Michigan in 1975 and returned to Turkey with the support of post-doctoral grants from The American Council of Learned Societies and The Social Science Research Council to record the poetry of ashiks popular among villagers in the provinces of Erzurum and Kars. She became the first American scholar specializing in 20th century Turkish language and literature to attain an academic position when in 1976 she joined the faculty at The University of Wisconsin-Madison where Professor Kemal Karpat was establishing the Turkish and Middle East Studies Programs. In 1985 Atis became full professor in the Department of Languages and Cultures of Asia teaching courses in Turkish literature, culture and folklore for both graduate and undergraduate students. She took several groups of Wisconsin students to Turkey for her summer seminar at Ege University hosted by her former student Prof. Dr. Metin Ekici. At Wisconsin Atiş served as chair of the Middle East Studies Program and was an active member of the Folklore Program, the Global Cultures Program and the Central Asia Studies Program. In addition to being a former President of The (Ottoman and) Turkish Studies Association, Atiş participated in the founding of the American Association of Teachers of Turkic Languages. She also served as UW-Madison’s delegate to the meetings in Philadelphia of The American Research Institute in Turkey.

The 2011 Dergah Yayınları book, (Çağdaş Türk Hikayesinde Semantik Yapı…) was originally published by E.J. Brill in 1983 as Semantic Structuring in the Modern Turkish Short Story, An Analysis of “The Dreams of Abdullah Efendi” and Other Stories by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar. It was the first significant work to appear in English on this important Turkish modernist novelist and poet. Another groundbreaking work by Atiş is her article on the articulation of Islamic themes in Turkish literature in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World (Oxford University Press 2009). Focus of other research has been on genres of oral narrative and poetry as in her comparative study of Eberhard-Boratav Tale Type 167 “Nar Tanesi” and Aarne Tale Type 709 “Snow White” in Walter Andrews (ed.) Intersections in Turkish Literature (University of Michigan Press, 2001.)

Sarah Moment Atiş has extensive experience living in villages and urban centers in eastern Turkey and has been a Rockefeller Fellow at The University of Michigan for work pertaining to her teaching project, “Fiction and Ethnography in Turkey.” Since her retirement at the close of 2010, she has participated in conferences devoted to the ashik tradition: the 2011 Celebration of Women Ashiks (Kadın Aşıklar Şöleni) held in Kocaeli İzmit and the 2012 Sümmani Sempozyumu convened in the city of Erzurum and the village of Samikale in Narman province.

To watch the interview conducted on February 11, 2022, please click this link.

Episode 6: Daniel Goffman (President, 1994-96)

Daniel Goffman served as Turkish Studies Association President from 1994-96. He was the editor of the Turkish Studies Association Bulletin from 1989-91 and of the Middle East Studies Association Bulletin from 1999-2003.

Dan received his B.A. from Earlham College, where he majored in early-modern European history. From there, he decided to study Jewish history at the University of Chicago, which he pursued for two years before switching to Ottoman history under the supervision of Halil İnalcık.  He spent two years doing research in Istanbul (his son, Sam, was born during that time in Istanbul).

While writing his dissertation, Dan took a temporary position teaching Middle East History at Emory University and then got a job at Ball State University, where he taught classes in the history of China, South Asia, and the Middle East. This experience of being the sole expert on “non-western” history inspired Dan to bring together Ottomanists at small colleges and non-research universities to support each other and explore ideas together. The “Great Lakes Ottoman Workshop,” or GLOW (the name was coined by Victor Ostapchuk), thrived, and the idea soon spread to other regions of the country.

Dan went to Istanbul several times on research grants from Fulbright, ARIT, and the NEH, and he taught at Boğaziçi University in 1993-94 and again in 1995. He chaired the History Department at Ball State, then moved to DePaul University in Chicago to head the History Department there. In 2006, his third year at DePaul, Dan had a serious stroke. He was left paralyzed on his left side and with Aphasia: he could no longer speak, write, or lecture. He officially retired in 2008, at 54 years old.

Dan Goffman’s numerous publications are grounded in early modern Ottoman history. He published Izmir and the Levantine World, 1550-1650 (1990); Visions from a Vanishing Past: Architectural Drawings from Izmir and Western Anatolia (1994), with Kaya Dinçer and Doğan Kuban; Britons in the Ottoman Empire (1998); The Ottoman City Between East and West: Aleppo, Izmir, and Istanbul (1999), with Bruce Masters and Edhem Eldem; The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe (2002); and, edited with Virginia Aksan, The Early Modern Ottomans: Remapping the Empire (2007).

Dan lives in Chicago with his wife, Carolyn, and various dogs. He has become an active artist, working in pastels and charcoal, and he enjoys keeping up with Ottoman history and historians.

To watch the interview conducted on March 24, 2022, please click this link.