Episodes

  • Pamphlets and Polemics in the 17th-Century Ottoman Empire

    Pamphlets and Polemics in the 17th-Century Ottoman Empire
    Dec 6 2025

    with Nir Shafir hosted by Maryam Patton | The seventeenth century has often been characterized as a period of disorder and religious polemics in the Ottoman Empire. In this podcast, Nir Shafir takes us inside his award-winning new book, which argues that the polemics of the early modern Ottoman world were fueled in part by changes in communication, namely the rise of short pamphlets that circulated easily in handwritten copies. Pamphlets created a new arena largely independent from the institutional centers of knowledge production where people debated everyday questions of the time about what it meant to be Muslim. In exploring the world of Ottoman pamphlets, Shafir also offers a new introduction to the nature of Ottoman education, book production, and reading practices prior to the rise of print and modern state institutions. « Click for More »
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  • A Sea of Sorcery: Roundtable with Shannon Chakraborty

    A Sea of Sorcery: Roundtable with Shannon Chakraborty
    Nov 19 2025

    produced by Shireen Hamza
    and featuring
    Fahad Bishara, KD Thompson, Liana Saif,
    Mahmood Kooria, Rebecca Hankins, and Samantha Pellegrino | What could historians have to say about a fantasy novel? The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, published in 2023, follows an aging mother and captain on magical adventures across the twelfth-century Indian Ocean world with her crew. It has been read widely, hitting bestseller lists in the US and being translated into eight languages. In this episode, a group of historians discusses the novel with its author, Shannon Chakraborty. Our conversation covers gender and geography, language and literature, piety and piracy, and of course, magic. « Click for More »
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  • Osmanlı'dan Cumhuriyet’e İstanbul’da Elektrikli Yaşam

    Osmanlı'dan Cumhuriyet’e İstanbul’da Elektrikli Yaşam
    Nov 10 2025

    Nurçin İleri, Emine Öztaner ve Meltem Kocaman Sunucu: Can Gümüş | Bu bölümde, Nurçin İleri, Emine Öztaner ve Meltem Kocaman ile elektriğin Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyet’e uzanan süreçte gündelik yaşamı ve toplumsal ilişkileri nasıl dönüştürdüğünü tartışıyoruz. İstanbul’un ilk aydınlatma girişimlerinden sanayi tesislerine, tramvay hatlarından ev içi teknolojilere uzanan örneklerle, teknolojik yeniliklerin yalnızca kent altyapılarını değil, aynı zamanda kentlilerin yaşam tahayyüllerini de nasıl şekillendirdiğini inceliyoruz. İleri’nin derlediği Bir Cereyan Hasıl Oldu: Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyet’e İstanbul’da Elektrikli Yaşam (Tarih Vakfı, 2024) başlıklı kitabı temel alan sohbetimizde, elektriğin, bir teknik yenilik olmanın ötesinde, modernleşme, emek, toplumsal cinsiyet ve kamusal alan gibi kesişen temalar etrafında yeni bir toplumsal düzenin ve kültürel dönüşümün parçası hâline gelişini konuşuyoruz. « Click for More »
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  • Türkiye, Iran, and the Politics of Comparison

    Türkiye, Iran, and the Politics of Comparison
    Oct 31 2025

    with Perin Gürel hosted by Chris Gratien | Comparisons are everywhere in American discussions of Middle East politics. As our guest, Perin Gürel, argues in a new book, this cultural impulse has political roots in the Cold War period. In this episode, we explore the origins of comparitivism through the lens of America's evolving relationship with Turkey and Iran over the course of the 20th century, focusing on how gender and race shaped the terms of the assymetrical relations between the US and other countries in the region. We discuss the "daddy issues" reflected in comparisons between the founding figures of the Republic of Turkey and Iran's monarchy, the changing image of Iran's empress on the global stage, and the ambivalent claims to whiteness and anti-imperialism that took shape in both countries. Throughout the conversation, we return to a critique of comparison as a placeholder for knowledge and a political instrument wielded with varying degrees of success to further American foreign policy goals, and we reflect on how this American project has shaped how all of us conceptualize the region's major social and political questions today. « Click for More »
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  • Martin Crusius and the Discovery of Ottoman Greece

    Martin Crusius and the Discovery of Ottoman Greece
    Oct 24 2025

    with Richard Calis hosted by Maryam Patton | In the late sixteenth century, a German Lutheran scholar named Martin Crusius compiled a remarkable ethnographic and scholarly account of Greek life under Ottoman rule in his seminal Turcograecia. Though he never left his home in Tübingen, Crusius spent decades corresponding with a far-flung network of intermediaries, including the Greek Orthodox Patriarch in Istanbul. He annotated books and manuscripts, and even interviewed Greek Orthodox alms-seekers who passed through Germany. In this episode, Richard Calis explores how Crusius’s fascination with the so-called Ottoman Greeks sheds light on broader early modern debates about cultural and religious difference and how Greek identity became entangled with orientalist perceptions of the Ottoman world. The Ottoman Turks, both omnipresent and strangely absent in Crusius’s research, emerge in unexpected places, including in his dreams. « Click for More »
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  • Arapların 1915’i: Soykırım, Kimlik, Coğrafya

    Arapların 1915’i: Soykırım, Kimlik, Coğrafya
    Mar 13 2025

    Emre Can Dağlıoğlu Sunucu: Can Gümüş & Önder Eren Akgül | Emre Can Dağlıoğlu’nun Arapların 1915’i: Soykırım, Kimlik, Coğrafya başlıklı derlemesine (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2022) odaklanan bu bölüm, 1915’i Osmanlı ve Osmanlı sonrası Arap dünyası bağlamında ele almanın önemine işaret ediyor. Hem soykırımı hem de 1915 sonrasını bölgenin siyasal, toplumsal ve çevresel krizleri içinde konumlandıran çalışma, Arap vilayetlerine sürülen Ermenilerin karşılaştıkları politikaları, hayatta kalma stratejilerini, Arap toplumları ve coğrafyasıyla kurdukları karmaşık ilişkileri inceleyen makalelerden oluşuyor. Bu podcastte, bu çalışmaların soykırımın tarihyazımında açtığı yeni pencereleri detaylandırırken 1915’i sabit bir kırılma anı olarak görmek yerine, farklı yerel dinamikler ve ilişkiler çerçevesinde zamansal ve mekânsal olarak genişleyen bir perspektifle ele almanın imkânları üzerine de sohbet ediyoruz. « Click for More »
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  • The End of Ottoman Crete

    The End of Ottoman Crete
    Dec 29 2024
    with Uğur Z. Peçe hosted by Sam Dolbee
    | In the 1890s, Ottoman Crete descended into communal violence between its Christian and Muslim inhabitants, abetted by foreign powers and Ottoman officials alike. In this episode, Uğur Z. Peçe explains how this conflict--which he calls a civil war--came about, what it meant in people's intimately connected everyday lives, and how it shaped the end of the Ottoman Empire. In particular, Cretan refugees resettled elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire became a key part of various protest movements including boycotts. Uğur speaks with us about these topics while traveling through present-day Crete, considering, among other things, the unexpected connections between the Eastern Black Sea and Crete, the island's distinctive landscape, and snails. « Click for More »
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  • Gender, Capitalism, and Democracy in Modern Arab Thought

    Gender, Capitalism, and Democracy in Modern Arab Thought
    Sep 30 2024

    with Susanna Ferguson hosted by Chris Gratien | What does the history of modern Arab political thought look like from the perspective of women authors? In this podcast, we sit down with longtime Ottoman History Podcast contributor Susanna Ferguson to explore this question, which animates her new book Labors of Love: Gender, Capitalism, and Democracy in Modern Arab Thought. Previous scholarship has focused on the role of women in discussing the roles of women, but as Prof. Ferguson argues, women writers of the 19th and 20th century can also be studied as producers of social theory and commentators on the important matters of their era. In our conversation, we use the lens of public discourse about child-rearing or tarbiyah as a window onto ideas about a wide range of topics, including morality, labor, and democratic governance. In doing so, we consider the importance of seeing the Arab world as a source of portable ideas about modern society, as opposed to a merely passive recipient of Western modernity. « Click for More »
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