Most Played

E513 | Over the course its final decades, millions of Muslim immigrants, many of them refugees of war and Russian conquest, settled in the Ottoman Empire. Between a quarter and a third of people in Turkey today have ancestors who arrived with those migrations. Yet their history often stops short of capturing the personal experiences of such people, what was erased, and what they have sought to preserve. In this episode, we speak with sociologist Şölen Şanlı Vasquez about how to write a more empathetic history of migration in Turkey through the lens of the Circassian diaspora. For her, this history is not just the story of how people from the North Caucasus were expelled from one empire and settled in an another. It is also a personal story about continuity, rupture, and recovery within the families of immigrants across generations and continents. Through a conversation about her ongoing research project called "The Home Within," we explore the themes of family, gender, ethnicity, race, and erasure --- not only in Turkey --- but across contexts of migration and displacement in the US and elsewhere. And we also reflect on the importance of public history that makes these issues relevant and relatable to a wider audience.

More at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2021/09/circassian.html

Şölen Şanlı Vasquez teaches sociology at the Santa Rosa Junior College. She earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from the New School for Social Research in 2009 and her M.Sc. in Political Sociology from the London School of Economics in 2000. Her book "Women and Cultural Citizenship in Turkey: Mass Media and 'Woman's Voice' Television" has been published by I.B. Tauris in 2016. Her most recent research project, The Home Within, is a digital history project about the Circassian diaspora in Turkey.

Brittany White is a graduate student in the Department of History at the University of Virginia. Broadly, she is interested in the African Diaspora in former Ottoman territories.

CREDITS

Episode No. 513
Release Date: 16 September 2021
Recording Location: San Francisco, CA / Charlottesville, VA
Sound production and transcript by Chris Gratien
Additional thanks to Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky, Christine Philliou, and Sam Dolbee
Music: Chad Crouch
Bibliography and images courtesy of Şölen Şanlı Vasquez available at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2021/09/circassian.html

Season 11

The Circassian Diaspora | Şölen Şanlı Vasquez

Command & Conquer: Generals (Original Soundtrack)

The Middle Kingdom

Command & Conquer (Original Soundtrack) [Remastered]

Airstrike (Remastered)

Red Army Rising

Breaker

Protocol

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

Preview of the Pro BMX Remake. Pro BMX was a C64 game released by Codemasters and this new remake preview features two of the original tracks by Matt Gray.

Pre Order Reformation

Matt Gray - Pro BMX Preview

The 60 second credits to the 2010 era of ITV's breakfast show, Daybreak. 

A wonderful piece by mcasso music

Daybreak 2010

DAYBREAK 2010 - 60s Credits

E289 | What terms and ideas were considered erotic in early modern Ottoman literature, and what can studying them tell us about later historical periods and our own conceptions of the beauty, love, and desire? In this episode, we welcome İrvin Cemil Schick back to the podcast to discuss a project he is compiling with İpek Hüner-Cora and Helga Anetshofer: a dictionary called the "Erotic Vocabulary of Ottoman Literature."

More at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2016/12/irvin-cemil-schick.html

İrvin Cemil Schick holds a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has taught inter alia at Harvard University, MIT, and İstanbul Şehir University. He is the author of The Erotic Margin: Sexuality and Spatiality in Alteritist Discourse (1999), The Fair Circassian: Adventures of an Orientalist Motif (in Turkish, 2004), and Writing the Body, Society, and the Universe: On Islam, Gender, and Culture (in Turkish, 2011). His current research interests include the Islamic arts of the book; gender, sexuality, and the body in Islam; and animals and the environment in Islam.

Susanna Ferguson is a Ph.D. Candidate in Middle Eastern History at Columbia University. She is currently working on a dissertation entitled "Tracing Tarbiya: Women, Gender and Childrearing in Egypt and Lebanon, 1865-1939."

Matthew Ghazarian is a Ph.D. student in Columbia University's Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, African Studies. His research focuses on the intersections of sectarianism, humanitarianism, and political economy in central and eastern Anatolia between 1856 and 1893.

CREDITS

Episode No. 289
Release Date: 18 December 2016
Recording Location: Istanbul
Editing and production by Chris Gratien
Sound excerpts: from archive.org - Baglamamin Dugumu - Necmiye Ararat and Muzaffer; Istanbul'dan Ayva Gelir Nar Gelir - Azize Tozem and Sari Recep; Harmandali - Recep Efendi, Cemal Efendi
Images and bibliography courtesy of İrvin Cemil Schick available athttp://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2016/12/irvin-cemil-schick.html

The Ottoman Erotic | İrvin Cemil Schick

A variation of the original idents from Channel 4.

Music composed by David Dundas for Channel 4 Television (C) 1982

Channel Four - 1982-1994

Channel Four - Launch Ident

E324 | Genetics have emerged as a new scientific tool for studying human ancestry and historical migration. And as research into the history of genetics demonstrates, genetics and other bioscientific approaches to studying ancestry were also integral to the transformation of the very national and racial categories through which ancestry has come to be described over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. In this podcast, we speak to Elise Burton about her research on the development of human genetics in the Middle East. Burton has studied the history of genetics within a comparative framework, examining the interrelated cases of human genetics research in Turkey, Israel, Iran, and elsewhere. In this episode, we focus in particular on the history of genetics in Turkey and its relationship to changing understandings of nation and race within the early Republic. In a bonus segment (see below), we also look under the hood of commercial genetic ancestry tests to understand present-day science within the context of these historical developments.

More at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2017/07/genetics.html

Elise Burton just earned her PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard in May 2017 and her BA in Middle Eastern Studies and Integrative Biology from UC Berkeley in May 2010. Come October, she will begin a Junior Research Fellowship at Newnham College, University of Cambridge.

Chris Gratien holds a Ph.D. from Georgetown University's Department of History and is currently an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. His research focuses on the social and environmental history of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East. He is currently preparing a monograph about the environmental history of the Cilicia region from the 1850s until the 1950s.

Shireen Hamza is a doctoral student in the History of Science department at Harvard University. Her research focuses broadly on the history of science and medicine in the Islamicate Middle Ages, and more specifically on the history of women's health.

Maryam Patton is a PhD student at Harvard University in the History and Middle Eastern Studies program. She studies the history of ideas and books in the Early Modern Mediterranean.

CREDITS

Episode No. 324
Release Date: 16 July 2017
Recording Location: Cambridge, MA
Audio editing by Chris Gratien
Music: from Excavated Shellac - Lili Labassi - Mazal Haye Mazal; from archive.org - Harmandali - Recep Efendi, Cemal Efendi; Baglamamin Dugumu - Necmiye Ararat and Muzaffer; Katibim (Uskudar'a Gider iken) - Safiye Ayla
Special thanks to Kara Günes for permission to use the composition "Istanbul"
Images and bibliography courtesy of Elise Burton available at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2017/07/genetics.html

Genetics and Nation-Building in the Middle East | Elise Burton

Stephen Rippy - Pressing On

E334 | Along with new maritime networks, information stiched together the empires of the early modern period. One component of the growing networks of information in the increasingly connected space of the Mediterranean world was espionage. As we learn in our latest conversation with Emrah Safa Gürkan about his new book Sultanın Casusları (Spies of the Sultan), the Ottoman Empire was both party and subject to the fascinating exploits of early modern spies. In this episode, we learn about the lives of Ottoman spies profiled in Gürkan's book, and we consider how the transformation of espionage in the Mediterranean relates to the development of early modern empires.

More at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2017/09/spies.html

Emrah Safa Gürkan is a historian of early modern Mediterranean focusing on themes such as espionage, privateering, religious conversion and slavery. He teaches at Istanbul 29 Mayis University. He is also co-creator of Ottoman History Podcast.

Chris Gratien is Assistant Professor of History at University of Virginia, where he teaches classes on global environmental history and the Middle East. He is currently preparing a monograph about the environmental history of the Cilicia region of the former Ottoman Empire from the 1850s until the 1950s.

CREDITS

Episode No. 334
Release Date: 25 September 2017
Recording Location: Şişhane, Istanbul
Audio editing by Chris Gratien
Music: Harmandali - Recep Efendi, Cemal Efendi
Special thanks to Kara Günes for permission to use the composition "Istanbul" and Muhtelif for "Bint El Shalabiya"
Images and bibliography courtesy of Emrah Safa Gürkan available at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2017/09/spies.html

Spies of the Sultan | Emrah Safa Gürkan

E340 | In this episode, we explore the life and times of Roxelana, also known as Hürrem Sultan, a slave girl who became chief consort and then legal wife of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman I (r. 1520-1566). We trace Roxelana's probable beginnings and the possible paths that took her to Istanbul, asking how she rose above her peers in the Old Palace to become a favored concubine and then the wife of the Sultan. We explore her relationship to other women at the Ottoman court, the politics of her motherhood and philanthropy, and her role in Ottoman diplomacy. In the end, Roxelana's work, her relationship with Suleiman, and the unusual nuclear family they created despite the otherwise polygynous patterns of reproduction at the Ottoman court would transform the rules of Ottoman succession, the role of Ottoman royal women, and the future of the Empire as a whole. The life story of this one remarkable woman sheds light on many facets of the history of the Ottoman Empire, showing how a single individual's story can serve as a lynchpin for grasping the complexities of an age. 

More at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2017/12/roxelana.html

Leslie Peirce has been interested in Turkish and Ottoman history ever since she joined the Peace Corps in Turkey. She has taught at Cornell, UC Berkeley, and New York University.

Susanna Ferguson is a Ph.D. Candidate in Middle Eastern History at Columbia University. She is currently working on a dissertation entitled "Tracing Tarbiya: Women, Gender and Childrearing in Egypt and Lebanon, 1865-1939."

Seçil Yilmaz received her PhD degree in History from the Graduate Center, CUNY with her dissertation entitled "Love in the Time of Syphilis: Medicine and Sex in the Ottoman Empire, 1860-1922." She is currently a Mellon postdoctoral fellow at the Society for the Humanities and Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University.

CREDITS

Episode No. 340
Release Date: 12 December 2017
Recording Location: New York University
Audio editing by Chris Gratien
Music: Harmandali - Recep Efendi, Cemal Efendi; Katibim (Uskudar'a Gider iken) - Safiye Ayla
Special thanks to Kara Günes for permission to use the composition "Istanbul" and toMuhtelif for the use of "Ta Paidia & Lamma Bada"
bibliography courtesy of Leslie Peirce available at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2017/12/roxelana.html

Hürrem Sultan or Roxelana, Empress of the East | Leslie Peirce

E456 | What did science look like in early modern Istanbul? In this episode, Harun Küçük discusses his new book, <i>Science without Leisure: Practical Naturalism in Istanbul, 1660-1732 </i>(University of Pittsburgh Press), which tackles this question in a bold fashion. Tracing the impact of late seventeenth and early eighteenth transformations of the Ottoman economy, Küçük argues that the material conditions of scholars greatly deteriorated in this period. The changes did not, however, stop people from wanting to know about the world, but rather reoriented their work toward more practical applications of science. Küçük contrasts these conditions with those in some parts of northwestern Europe, where a more leisurely version of science--often theoretically inclined--emerged. He also grapples with the parallels between educational institutions in the early modern period and today.

More at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2020/03/science-ottoman-empire.html

Harun Küçük is Assistant Professor of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He has previously published on Ottoman translations of scientific texts, science and religion, and the interaction between science, technology and statecraft in the early eighteenth century. His recent book, Science without Leisure: Practical Naturalism in Istanbul, 1660-1732, takes a look at the relationship between the material conditions of scholarship and the content of science in the Ottoman capital. He is currently engaged in two collaborative projects on early modern Ottoman history and is writing a book-length essay on the relationship between time and scientific labor.

Sam Dolbee is a postdoctoral fellow in the Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale University. He completed his PhD at New York University in 2017. His research is on the environmental history of the Jazira region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Zoe Griffith is Assistant Professor of History at Baruch College, CUNY and completed her Ph.D. at Brown University in 2017. Her research focuses on political economy, law, and governance in the Ottoman Arab provinces from the 17th to the 19th centuries. She records mainly in New York City.

CREDITS

Episode No. 456
Release Date: 25 March 2020
Recording Location: Baruch College, New York, NY
Audio editing by Sam Dolbee and Chris Gratien
Music: Zé Trigueiros, "Big Road of Burravoe," "Petite Route," "Fast," "Saez"
Images and bibliography courtesy of Harun Küçük at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2020/03/science-ottoman-empire.html

Science in Early Modern Istanbul | Harun Küçük

Chris and Molly read Infinite Jest, Part 9. Pages 61-65: Hal has a dream; we learn of the filmography of James. O Incandenza. Discussion starts at 1:11:55.

The Circassian Diaspora | Şölen Şanlı Vasquez

Ottoman History Podcast

Related tracks