Northwestern University
October 25-27, 2024
Program:
OTSA 2024 Conference
Northwestern University
October 25-27, 2024
FRIDAY, 10/25
(1800 Sherman Ave. Evanston, IL 60201)
8:30AM CST– 10:00 AM CST OTSA Board Meeting
Room 3001
10:30AM CST– 10:45AM CST Welcome Remarks and Orientation
Room 3029
11:00AM CST– 12:30PM 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
12:30PM CST– 1:30PM CST Lunch Break
1:30PM CST– 3:00PM 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
3:15PM CST– 4:30PM 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
4:45PM CST– 5:45PM 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
6:00PM CST– 8:00PM CST Reception/Award Ceremony Room 3029/Suite 3-000 Lobby
SATURDAY, 10/26 (HARRIS HALL- 1881 Sheridan Road Evanston, IL 60208)
9:00AM CST- 10:00AM CST Business Meeting
Room 108
10:30AM CST- 12:00PM 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
12:00PM CST- 1:30PM CST Lunch Break
1:30PM CST- 3:00PM 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
3:15PM CST- 4:30PM 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”
4:45PM CST– 5:45PM 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.
6PM CST- 8PM CST Reception
Room 108
SUNDAY, 10/27 (HARRIS HALL- 1881 Sheridan Road Evanston, IL 60208)
9:00AM CST– 10:15AM 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
10:30AM CST– 12:00PM CST Panel Session 8
Beyond the Madrasa: Sites of Science and Religion in Ottoman History
Room 107
Nathaniel Moses, Havard University
“The Hindiyeh Canal and the Ecology of Value in Nineteenth Century Iraq”
*Zeynep Küleli, John Hopkins University
“Divine Blooms: Cultural and Symbolic Meanings of Tulips in Early Modern Ottoman Floriculture”
Dana Nabulsi, Havard 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
12:15PM– 1:45PM 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 a * will be participating virtually.
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