In November 2020, OTSA launched a Zoom meeting series that is meant to create an opportunity for us to get together more often than once a year at MESA. Inspired by our former president Virginia Aksan’s “What’s Up in Ottoman Studies?” (the article that launched our journal, JOTSA, in 2014), “W’OTSAp in Ottoman and Turkish Studies?” (or simply W’OTSAp) aims to keep us up-to-date with the developments and news of our field. We hope to provide a forum for our members to get to know the recipients of our annual awards and prizes, the authors who contributed to special thematic issues of JOTSA, a book that received attention in the field, or issues and questions that require our attention. We will make an effort to schedule these meetings on the third Wednesday or Thursday of the month at noon (EST) and to finish them in an hour, but we know the world is not a perfect place and it may not work out all the time. Please feel free to get in touch with Baki Tezcan, our President, if you are interested in hosting such a meeting in 2022. You can reach him at btezcan@ucdavis.edu
Past Meetings
Reserved Abundance: State Granaries of Early Modern Istanbul
July 27, 2023
At OTSA’s thirty-first W’OTSAp meeting, Namık Erkal (TED University) will present his article, “Reserved Abundance: State Granaries of Early Modern Istanbul,” which won the inaugural Yavuz Sezer Article Prize in the History of Architecture and the Urban Environment in 2022. Sibel Zandi-Sayek (William & Mary) will be the discussant and Semra Horuz (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) will moderate the session.
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Red Star over the Black Sea: Nazım Hikmet & His Generation
June 29, 2023
At OTSA’s 30th W’OTSAp meeting, we will remember Nazım Hikmet whom we lost sixty year ago. H. Meyer (Montana State University) will present his new book on the poet; Samuel Hodgkin (Yale University) and Holly Shissler (University of Chicago) will be the discussants; and James Ryan (Foreign Policy Research Institute) will moderate the session.
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The Armenians of Aintab: The Economics of Genocide in an Ottoman Province
May 24, 2023
At OTSA’s 29th W’OTSAp meeting, Ümit Kurt (University of Newcastle) will present his book, “The Armenians of Aintab: The Economics of Genocide in an Ottoman Province,” which received an Honorable Mention in the 2022 OTSA Book Prize Competition. Ronald Grigor Suny (University of Michigan) will be the discussant. Janet Klein (Akron University) will moderate the session.
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Governing Armenian Schools Through Ambiguity
April 26, 2023
At OTSA’s twenty-eighth W’OTSAp meeting, Hülya Delihüseyinoğlu will present her paper that received an honorable mention in the 2022 OTSA Graduate Student Paper Prize competition. Ohannes Kılıçdağı will be the discussant and Umut Türem will moderate the session.
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The Early Career of Köprülü Mehmed Pasha: An Archival Reconstruction
March 31, 2023
At OTSA’s 27th W’OTSAp meeting, Christopher Whitehead (Ohio State University) will present his 2022 OTSA Graduate Student Paper Prize winning paper. His adviser Jane Hathaway (Ohio State University) will chair the session and Linda Darling (University of Arizona) will be the discussant.
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Rum Geographies
February 24, 2023
Rum Geographies is a special dossier, edited by Christine Philliou, and published in JOTSA 9/1 (Spring 2022): 13-123. At this W’OTSAp session, three of the four contributors to this dossier, Evangelia Achladi (Sismanoglio Megaro Library – Consulate General of Greece in Istanbul), Gülen Göktürk Baltas (Eskişehir Osmangazi Üniversitesi), and Panagiotis C. Poulos (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens) will present summaries of their contributions. You can read the complete texts of their contributions online at https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/49708.
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Making Sense of History: Narrativity and Literariness in the Ottoman Chronicle of Naima
December 8, 2022
At OTSA’s 25th W’OTSAp meeting, Gül Şen (University of Bonn) will introduce her recently published book, Making Sense of History: Narrativity and Literariness in the Ottoman Chronicle of Naima (Brill, 2022). Selim Kuru (University of Washington) and Claudia Römer (University of Vienna) will provide commentary. The session will be moderated by Suraiya Faroqhi (Ibn Haldun University).
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With Halil İnalcık at the Quads of the University of Chicago: A Commemoration by His Students
November 11, 2022
OTSA’s twenty-fourth W’OTSAp meeting focuses on Halil İnalcık, whom we lost in 2016. İnalcık had a long career at the University of Chicago where he arrived in 1972 from Ankara University. Two of her students, Linda Darling and Fariba Zarinebaf, recently co-edited a special dossier of memories and research articles entitled “With Halil İnalcık at the Quads of the University of Chicago: A Commemoration by His Students” that was published in Archivum Ottomanicum 38 (2021). Several of the contributors to the dossier will be at this W’OTSAp meeting at which we will remember Halil İnalcık and talk about his contributions to Ottoman and Turkish Studies.
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Furnishing the Ottoman Empire: Crystal Objects in Sacred Spaces
October 21, 2022
Sharon Mizbani (Yale University) will share her paper that won the 2021 OTSA Sydney Fisher Graduate Student Paper Prize. Deniz Türker (Rutgers University) will be the discussant. The session will be chaired by Zeynep Çelik (Columbia University).
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Ukraine from Ottoman Times to Today
September 30, 2022
At OTSA’s 22nd W’OTSAp meeting, our topic will be “Ukraine from Ottoman Times to Today.” Nihat Çelik (San Diego State University), Dilyara Agisheva (Harvard University), and Oleksandr Halenko (İstanbul Üniversitesi) will make three short presentations, entitled “The Russian Annexation of Crimea in 1783,” “The Making of Colonial Space in Crimea in the Late 18th and 19th Centuries,” and “History or Life: The Ottoman Past That Tempted Russia to Invade Ukraine,” respectively. Victor Ostapchuk (University of Toronto) will chair the panel and moderate the open discussion.
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The Making of a mid-nineteenth-century Ottoman gazetteer — A collaborative effort of two research projects: UrbanOccupationsOETR and POPGEO_BG
August 26, 2022
“Industrialisation and Urban Growth from the mid-nineteenth century Ottoman Empire to Contemporary Turkey in a Comparative Perspective, 1850-2000,” or UrbanOccupationsOETR, has been the first European Research Council (ERC) funded project in the Social Sciences and Humanities in Turkey. Led by M. Erdem Kabadayı (Koç University), the project focused on several research questions and datasets in the last six years. A mid-nineteenth-century Ottoman gazetteer is one of the outputs they would like to share publicly as a resource. Akın Sefer (Koç University) led a research group under Kabadayı’s supervision for dataset construction for the gazetteer.
Grigor Boykov (University of Vienna), a former member of the UrbanOccupationsOETR, later started his research project, POPGEO_BG (Population Geography of Bulgaria, 1500-1920: A Historical Spatial Analysis), funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions and continued to collaborate for the making of the mid-nineteenth-century Ottoman gazetteer.
In this session, they will report on their research projects and possibilities of enhanced collaborations supported by generative aspects of digital and spatial history.
Istanbul through the Looking Glass of the Local
July 8, 2022
At the twentieth session of W’OTSAp, Jeremy F. Walton (University of Rijeka) will chair a panel on the special dossier he edited, which was published in the Journal of Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association 8/1 (Summer 2021): 11-189. The panel participants, who were contributors to the special dossier, are Alize Arıcan (Boston University), Çiğdem Buğdaycı (University of Amsterdam), Nagihan Haliloğlu (İbn Haldun Üniversitesi), Çiçek İlengiz (EUME, Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin), Suzan Meryem Rosita Kalaycı (University of Oxford), and Enno Maessen (Utrecht University).
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The Economic Activities and the Political Ambitions of Bankers and Merchants in Greece and the Ottoman Empire during the Crisis of the 1870s
June 29, 2022
At the nineteenth session of W’OTSAp, Dimitrios Stergiopoulos (University of California, San Diego), the Winner of the 2021 OTSA Vangelis Kechriotis Memorial Travel Grant, will share his dissertation project. Evguenia Davidova (Portland State University) will provide feedback and Christine Philliou (University of California, Berkeley) will moderate the session.
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Nomads and Climate: The Crisis of Pastoralism in Late Ottoman Kurdistan
May 6, 2022
At this session of W’OTSAp, Zozan Pehlivan (University of Minnesota), winner of the 2021 OTSA Ömer Lütfi Barkan Article Prize, for her article “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): 316-56, will talk about the topic of her article and its larger context. The session will be moderated by Sam White (The Ohio State University), and our discussant will be Nora Barakat (Stanford University).
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Archives, Empire, and Community: Ottoman Paper in Catholic Spaces
April 29, 2022
At this session of W’OTSAp, Ana Sekulić (University of Pittsburgh), 2021 Winner of MESA’s dissertation award in humanities with her dissertation “Conversion of the Landscape: Environment and Religious Politics in an Early Modern Ottoman Town,” and 2021 recipient of honorable mention in OTSA’s article prize competition with her article “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): 925-62], will talk about the topic of her article and its larger context. The session will be moderated by Molly Greene (Princeton University) and our discussant will be Heather Ferguson (Claremont McKenna College).
A Companion to Early Modern Istanbul: A book panel in loving memory of Yavuz Sezer
March 25, 2022
Shirine Hamadeh (Koç University), Çiğdem Kafescioğlu (Boğaziçi University), Selim Kuru (University of Washington), and Gülru Necipoğlu (Harvard University) will participate at this book panel on the recently published A Companion to Early Modern Istanbul, which was co-edited by Hamadeh and Kafescioğlu. The panel will be moderated by Ümit Fırat Açıkgöz (American University of Beirut) and Deniz Türker (Rutgers University), who will introduce the panel with a remembrance of Yavuz Sezer, their friend, whom we lost on March 24, 2021 to COVID.
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Ottoman Religious Politics in the Confessional Age
February 28, 2022
At this session of W’OTSAp, chaired by Tijana Krstić (Central European University) and Derin Terzioğlu (Boğaziçi University), Polina Ivanova (Justus Liebig University), Emese Muntan (CEU), Anna Ohanjanyan (Institute of Ancient Manuscripts ‘Matenadaran’), Nir Shafir (UC San Diego), and Hasan Umut (McGill University)–members of the OTTOCONFESSION (The Fashioning of a Sunni Orthodoxy and the Entangled Histories of Confession-Building in the Ottoman Empire, 15th-17th Centuries) research team–will share the work they have been doing since 2015, including the sourcebook they are currently working on.
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The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs
January 26, 2022
Marc Baer (London School of Economics) will introduce his new book in which he argues that rather than being “the Islamic, Asian antithesis of the Christian, European West, … the Ottomans’ multiethnic, multilingual, and multireligious domain reached deep into Europe’s heart.” Elyse Semerdjian (Whitman College) and Ceyda Karamürsel (School of Oriental and African Studies) will discuss Baer’s The Ottomans from different angles.
Enlightening Europe on Islam and the Ottomans: Mouradgea d’Ohsson and His Masterpiece
December 14, 2021
Carter Findley (Ohio State University) will introduce his book, Enlightening Europe on Islam and the Ottomans: Mouradgea d’Ohsson and His Masterpiece (Brill, 2019). Claudia Römer (University of Vienna) and Sebouh Aslanian (University of California, Los Angeles) will launch a discussion that the audience will be encouraged to join.
Ottoman Religious Politics in the Confessional Age
November 18, 2021
This panel had to be postponed due to health related complications. Once it is rescheduled, we will announce the new date.
This thirteenth session of W’OTSAp is devoted to the OTTOCONFESSION (The Fashioning of a Sunni Orthodoxy and the Entangled Histories of Confession-Building in the Ottoman Empire, 15th-17th Centuries) research team that is supported by the European Research Council. Led by Tijana Krstić (Central European University [CEU]) and Derin Terzioğlu (Boğaziçi University), Polina Ivanova (Justus Liebig University), Emese Muntan (CEU), Anna Ohanjanyan (Institute of Ancient Manuscripts ‘Matenadaran’), Nir Shafir (UC San Diego), Yorgos Tzedopoulos (Academy of Athens), and Hasan Umut (McGill University) will share the work they have been doing since 2015, including the sourcebook they are currently working on.
Building a Biographical Database for the Ottoman Ulema: Challenges, Opportunities and Research Prospects
October 21, 2021
Abdurrahman Atçıl, Salih Günaydın, Gürzat Kami, and Abdullah Karaarslan, a Sabancı University research team led by Atçıl and also supported by İSAM (Centre for Islamic Studies), will share with us the biographical database on the Ottoman ulema they have developed and are about to make public. They also work on “OTTOLEGAL- The Making of Ottoman Law: The Agency and Interaction of Diverse Groups in Lawmaking, 1450-1650,” which is supported by the European Research Council grant Atçıl secured in 2020.
Janissaries in Ottoman Port-Cities: Muslim Financial and Political Networks in the Early Modern Mediterranean
September 10, 2021
JaNet, funded by the European Research Council and run by Yannis Spyropoulos, investigates the economic and sociopolitical role of the Janissaries in the 18th and early 19th centuries through their examination as a complex of interconnected networks in the ‘extended Mediterranean’ (including major Black Sea and Danubian ports). At OTSA’s 11th W’OTSAp meeting, Yannis Spyropoulos (Institute for Mediterranean Studies/FORTH), and his colleagues (in alphabetical order of last names) İrfan Kokdaş (İzmir Kâtip Çelebi University), Mehmet Mert Sunar (İstanbul Medeniyet University), and Aysel Yıldız (IMS/FORTH) will share with us the work they have been doing in the context of JaNet.
The Greek Revolution and Ottoman Studies: Problems, Methods, and Revisions
August 27, 2021
2021 is the Bicentennial of the Greek Revolution. This panel is a continuation of the discussion the panelists (in alphabetical order of their last names) Hakan Erdem (Sabancı University), Ioannis N. Grigoriadis (Bilkent University/ELIAMEP), Şükrü Ilıcak (University of Crete), and Christine Philliou (University of California, Berkeley) engaged in at the Delphi Economic Forum panel “Ottoman views of the Greek War of Independence” that was chaired by Cemal Kafadar (Harvard University) on May 13, 2021 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja9tN-dfeGk).
Geographies and Histories of the Ottoman Supernatural Tradition
July 21, 2021
At this W’OTSAp meeting, which is hosted by Marinos Sariyannis (Institute for Mediterranean Studies/FORTH, Rethymno), Zeynep Aydoğan (FORTH), Feray Coşkun (Özyeğin University), Güneş Işıksel (Medeniyet Üniversitesi), Ethan Menchinger (Manchester University), and Ahmet Tunç Şen (Columbia University) will present some of the work they have been doing within the framework of “GHOST — Geographies and Histories of the Ottoman Supernatural Tradition: Exploring Magic, the Marvelous, and the Strange in Ottoman Mentalities (2018-2023),” a research project funded by the European Research Council and run by Marinos Sariyannis.
Entangled Literatures and Histories in the Pre-Modern Ottoman World with İpek Hüner Cora and Michael Pifer
June 18, 2021
JOTSA’s last special dossier, Entangled Literatures and Histories in the Pre-Modern Ottoman World, will be the focus of our meeting on Friday, June 18, at 12 pm (EDT, 9 am PDT, 7 pm Istanbul). The co-editors of the dossier, İpek Hüner Cora and Michael Pifer, will host the contributors, (in alphabetical order of last names) Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano, Maryam Ala Amjadi, Ayşe Dalyan, Selim Kuru, Zeynep Oktay Uslu, Erin Piñon, and Dana Sajdi.
Missing Pages: The Modern Life of a Medieval Manuscript, from Genocide to Justice with Heghnar Watenpaugh
May 20, 2021
On Thursday, May 20, at 12 pm (EDT, 9 am PDT, 7 pm Istanbul), Chris Gratien will host Heghnar Watenpaugh for a presentation of her Missing Pages: The Modern Life of a Medieval Manuscript, from Genocide to Justice, the winner of OTSA’s (2020) and the Society for Armenian Studies’ (2019) book prizes, as well as the Gold Medal (tie) in the 2020 Independent Publisher Book Awards in History (World) category. Emily Neumeier will be the discussant.
Ottoman Environments with Faisal Husain and Michael Christopher Low
April 21, 2021
On Wednesday, April 21, at 12 pm (EDT, 9 am PDT, 7 pm Istanbul), Alan Mikhail will host Faisal Husain and Michael Christopher Low, who will present their books, Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj and Rivers of the Sultan: The Tigris and Euphrates in the Ottoman Empire. Zozan Pehlivan will be the discussant.
Habits of the Market: Commercial Networks, Regional Finance, and Resistance in the Ottoman Tobacco Trade (c. 1858-1912) with Kaleb Herman Adney
March 17, 2021
Our W’OTSAp meeting in March features the winner of the 2020 Vangelis Kechriotis Memorial Travel Grant, Kaleb Herman Adney (UCLA). Herman’s dissertation project, Habits of the Market: Commercial Networks, Regional Finance, and Resistance in the Ottoman Tobacco Trade (c. 1858-1912), examines the political economy of tobacco in Western Thrace and Eastern Macedonia during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During this time, market dynamics provided investment and profit-making opportunities for commercial elites while simultaneously limiting the accessibility and potential benefits of these opportunities for burgeoning communities of merchants and cultivators. A number of legal and political mechanisms stimulated the commercialization of agriculture, contributed to increased personal as well as imperial debt, incentivized smuggling, and shaped social relations amongst regional communities. These factors played a significant role in economic and political behavior and, as such, contributed to creating a culture in late Ottoman Thrace and Macedonia that was engineered for volatility, especially in the forms of illegal commerce and political violence. On Wednesday, March 17, at 12 pm (EST, 9 am PST, 7 pm Istanbul) Herman will talk about his project and receive feedback from Eyal Ginio (Hebrew University of Jerusalem). Erdem Kabadayı (Koç University) will chair the session.
Meeting Recording / Poster
Chasing The Ottoman Early Modern with Virginia Aksan, Boğaç Ergene, and Antonis Hadjikyriacou
February 26, 2021
Participants
Palmira Brummett (University of Tennessee)
Giancarlo Casale (University of Minnesota)
Beshara Doumani (Brown University)
Heather Ferguson (Claremont McKenna Col.)
John-Paul Ghobrial (University of Oxford)
Jane Hathaway (Ohio State University)
Joanna Innes (University of Oxford)
Güneş Işıksel (Medeniyet Üniversitesi)
Dina Khoury (George Washington University)
Selim Kuru (University of Washington)
Marinos Sariyannis (FORTH Institute for Mediterranean Studies)
Nir Shafir (University of California, San Diego)
Baki Tezcan (University of California, Davis)
Ali Yaycıoğlu (Stanford University)
Chasing the Ottoman Early Modern is a special dossier, co-edited by Virginia Aksan, Boğaç Ergene, and Antonis Hadjikyriacou, and published in JOTSA 7/1 (Spring 2020): 7-86. You can read the contributions of the participants online at https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/42727
Sacrificial Limbs
Masculinity, Disability, and Political Violence in Turkey
January 21, 2021
SALİH CAN AÇIKSÖZ
University of California, Los Angeles
Winner of the Fatima Mernissi Book Award, 2020 Middle East Studies Association
Discussant:
Leyla Neyzi
University of Glasgow & Sabancı University
Chair:
Melissa Bilal
University of California, Los Angeles
Meeting Recording / Poster
What Is In A Name?
A conversation with Fatma Müge Göçek
December 22, 2020
Professor Göçek (Univ. of Michigan) was Elected Chair of the American Sociological Association (ASA), Comparative Historical Sociology (CHS) section in 2018-19.
Moderator: Baki Tezcan (University of California, Davis)
Journals of The Plague Year
The Ottoman Press and The Istanbul Cholera Outbreak of 1871
November 18, 2020
Erik Blackthorne-O’Barr, Columbia University Winner of the 2020 Sydney N.
Fisher Graduate Student Paper Prize
Discussant: Elizabeth B. Frierson, University of Cincinnati
Chair: Virginia Aksan, McMaster University
Meeting Recording / Poster