I am an Ottoman historian specializing in urban life, dream narratives, and Sufism from the late fifteenth to the early eighteenth centuries. Currently I am working on a book project on the role of imagination in the making of urban communities in Ottoman Istanbul. Like their contemporaries in other cities of the early modern world, Ottoman writers produced a rich literature to orient their readers to imagine particular ways of walking, viewing, and inhabiting the city from the late fifteenth to the late seventeenth centuries. I aim to show how these narratives promoted new sites of sociability that enjoyed increasing autonomy from the imperial seat of power. In addition to my work on this book, I am also participating in an ERC-funded project on the geographies and histories of the Ottoman supernatural in which I explore why early modern Ottomans viewed ancient statues, columns, and obelisks of Istanbul as talismans. My ultimate goal in these projects is to find new material, and a new perspective, to write the history of Ottoman Istanbul not only on its own terms but also in dialogue with early modern urban scholarship.
See my Faculty page here
See my academia.edu page here
