Ottoman History Podcast

with Randa Tawil

hosted by Sam Dolbee





| At the turn of the twentieth century, large numbers of people from Ottoman Syria began to settle abroad, giving birth to the modern Arab-American diaspora. Yet for generations, what was lost in the history of their becoming American is the changes that happened along the way, as people undertook arduous and sometimes circuitous journeys across a world of both unprecedented mobility and scrutiny of migrants. In this interview with Randa Tawil about her new book, Race in Transit, we explore that liminal zone and the many itineraries of the early Syrian diaspora as reflected across archives in Beirut, Marseille, Liverpool, Manila, Washington, D.C., Michigan, and Texas. At every stage of their journeys, race played a role in the fate of these migrants, but as Dr. Tawil explains, it was far from a stable category. In crossing the globe, Syrian migrants also crossed a "global color line" and passed through shifting legal and conceptual boundaries that defined the politics of migration.         



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with Zozan Pehlivan

hosted by Chris Gratien and Ayah Aboelela





| What do environmental features like plants, animals, landscapes, and climate have to do with the political transformation of the Ottoman Empire? Everything, according to our guest in this episode, Zozan Pehlivan, author of The Political Ecology of Violence: Peasants and Pastoralists in the Last Ottoman Century. As Prof. Pehlivan explains, environmental history can be a fascinating window onto how imperial and global developments reshaped local society. Focusing on the region of Kurdistan, Pehlivan explores the changing relationships between peasants and pastoralists under the influence of commercialization, Ottoman centralization, and climatic change. She argues that these forces interacted to shape a "political ecology of violence," reflected not only in the shocking anti-Armenian violence of the 1890s, but also in quotidian conflicts over land and livestock fueled by Ottoman policy.   



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Namık Erkal, Firuzan Melike Sümertaş ve Haris Theodorelis-Rigas

Sunucu: Can Gümüş



| 1719’da Bükreş’te yaşayan bir âlim, İstanbul’daki bir dostuna yazdığı mektupta, “Cümle Fener burada; artık İstanbul’u hatırlamıyorum” diyordu. Koç Üniversitesi Anadolu Medeniyetleri Araştırma Merkezi’nde (ANAMED) açılan Cümle Fener Burada: Hane, Mahalle, Saray ve Şehir sergisine adını veren bu ifade, Fenerlilerin tarihini yalnızca bir topluluğun yükselişi ve dolaşımı üzerinden değil, İstanbul ile Eflak ve Boğdan arasında kurulan mekânsal bağlar ile nesnelerin, siyasi ritüellerin ve kültürel pratiklerin dolaşımı üzerinden düşünmeye davet ediyor.

Bu bölümde “Fenerliler Çağı”nı ve 1821 sonrasındaki dönüşümü, voyvodaların atanma merasimlerini, Haliç kıyısında yaşanan mimari ve mekânsal değişimi ve Fenerlilerin maddi kültürünü konuşuyoruz. Aynı zamanda, bir araştırma sergisinin üretim ve sergileme süreçlerini ele alıyor, dağılmış ve çoğu zaman kaybolmuş bir mirasın nasıl görünür kılındığını, küratoryal anlatının bilinen ile varsayılan, mevcut ile kayıp arasındaki boşluklarla nasıl çalıştığını tartışıyoruz. Maddi kültür, mekân ve gündelik hayata odaklanan bu yaklaşım vesilesiyle, Fenerlileri ulusal tarihyazımlarının sabit kategorilerinin ötesinde, farklı coğrafyalar arasında şekillenen çok katmanlı bir topluluk olarak ele alıyor.



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with Elyse Semerdjian

hosted by Matthew Ghazarian





| How can feminist approaches to the body and embodiment change the ways we approach the history of violence? In this episode we discuss these topics with Elyse Semerdjian, author of Remnants: Embodied Archives of the Armenian Genocide (Stanford University Press 2023). Rather than ask about the official intent, geopolitics, or international legal implications of this violence, Semerdjian shifts the focus onto the bodies, skin, and bones of Armenians targeted for removal and extermination. Her work sheds new light on the efforts to recover Armenians taken into Arab, Kurdish, and Turkish households in an attempt to rebuild the body of the nation; the tattoos that marked the bodies of Armenians among nomadic pastoralist communities in the deserts of the Jazira region; and the role of bones and bodily remnants in sustaining and complicating commemoration of the Armenian genocide.





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with Mostafa Hussein

hosted by Chris Gratien





| Zionism, as a cultural and political movement of Hebrew revival, sought to forge a connection between the modern Jewish people and a deep past located in the geography of late Ottoman and British Palestine. As our guest in this episode, Mostafa Hussein, explores in a new book, this revival in turn birthed an intellectual project of intimate and often contradictory engagement with Arabo-Islamic culture, a process that he describes as Hebrew Orientalism. As we discuss, Jewish orientalists from diverse backgrounds between East and West developed an interest in a variety of medieval Arabic texts, drawing on history, geography, botany, literature, and linguistics to forge cultural exchange in service of Zionist aspirations. Whether these scholars imagined a future of conflict or coexistence in Palestine, their work illuminates how Arab cultural heritage was integral to the remaking of modern Jewish identity.   



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