New Books in Turkish Studies

Feb 26 2025 156 ep. 60 mins 58
New Books in Turkish Studies Podcast artwork

Interviews with authors about new books in Turkish and Ottoman Studies.

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Yuval Ben-Bassat and Johann Büssow, "Late Ottoman Gaza: An Eastern Mediterranean Hub in Transformation" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

Feb 26 2025 60 mins  
Today, when we think about Gaza we think about the war, the destruction of the city and the constant movement of its population. In contemporary public discourse, Gaza tends to be characterized solely as a theatre of the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. However, little is known about Gaza's society, politics, economy, and culture during the Ottoman era. Drawing

Emine Ö Evered, "Prohibition in Turkey: Alcohol and the Politics of Identity" (U Texas Press, 2024)

Feb 19 2025 56 mins  
Historian Emine Ö. Evered’s Prohibition in Turkey: Alcohol and the Politics of Identity (University of Texas Press, 2024) investigates the history of alcohol, its consumption, and its proscription as a means to better understand events and agendas of the late Ottoman and early Turkish republican eras. Through a comprehensive examination of archival, literary, popular culture, me

Yanni Kotsonis, "The Greek Revolution and the Violent Birth of Nationalism" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Jan 29 2025 57 mins  
Dr. Yanni Kotsonis, Professor of History and Russian & Slavic Studies at New York University, is the author of The Greek Revolution and the Violent Birth of Nationalism (Princeton University Press, 2025). This deeply researched and beautifully written history traces how something brand new – a Greek nation-state – emerged out of an Ottoman Balkan mosaic of languages, religions,

The Political Ecology of Violence: Peasants and Pastoralists in the Last Ottoman Century

Jan 15 2025 54 mins  
From the nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, recurrent and extreme climate disruptions became an underlying yet unacknowledged component of escalating conflict between Christian Armenian peasants and Muslim Kurdish pastoralists in Ottoman Kurdistan. By the eve of the First World War, the Ottoman state's shifting responses to these mounting tensions transformed the conflict

Olga Borovaya, "The 1840 Rhodes Blood Libel: Ottoman Jews at the Dawn of the Tanzimat Era" (Berghahn Books, 2024)

Jan 05 2025 77 mins  
The Rhodes blood libel of 1840, an outbreak of anti-Jewish violence, was initiated by the island’s governor in collusion with Levantine merchants, who charged the local Jewish community with murdering a Christian boy for ritual purposes. An episode in the shared histories of Ottomans and Jews, it was forgotten by the former and, even if remembered, misunderstood by the latter. Th

Serkan Görkemli, "Sweet Tooth and Other Stories" (UP of Kentucky, 2024)

Dec 22 2024 69 mins  
Queerness, labels, and allyship are central themes in this moving collection of stories set in Turkey, where Middle Eastern and Euro-American expressions of identity collide and naming one's orientation is a fraught endeavor. An eleven-year-old undergoes hand surgery that will allow him to wear a wedding ring in adulthood. Two college roommates reach an erotic understanding as they

Ege Selin Islekel, "Nightmare Remains: The Politics of Mourning and Epistemologies of Disappearance" (Northwestern UP, 2024)

Dec 20 2024 66 mins  
What does mourning have to do with politics? How do practices of forced disappearance and improper burial shape subjects, spaces, and what is intelligible? What are people doing in movements across the globe when they gather in public space and recount nightmares of their disappeared loved ones? In Nightmare Remains: The Politics of Mourning and Epistemologies of Disappearance (No

Nergis Ertürk, "Writing in Red: Literature and Revolution Across Turkey and the Soviet Union" (Columbia UP, 2024)

Dec 18 2024 72 mins  
Writing in Red: Literature and Revolution Across Turkey and the Soviet Union (Columbia UP, 2024) examines political relations and literary translations between Turkey and the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s through to the 1960s. By drawing on a wide range of texts – from erotic comedy, historical fiction and film, to socialist realist novels and theatre – Ertürk argues that th

Infrastructure, Development, and Racialization

Nov 24 2024 80 mins  
International development projects supported by governments of wealthy countries, international financial institutions, and influential NGOs like the Gates Foundation purport to uplift poor or disadvantaged populations through political, economic, and social interventions in these communities. However, practices, policies, and discourses of development also have a darker side: they

Emrah Yildiz, "Zainab's Traffic: Moving Saints, Selves, and Others Across Borders" (U California Press, 2024)

Oct 22 2024 72 mins  
Emrah Yildiz's new book Zainab’s Traffic: Moving Saints, Selves, and Others Across Borders (University of California Press, 2024) is a masterful ethnographic study that maps the religious, political, and economic traffics from Tehran to just outside Damascus to the shrine of Sayyida Zainab’s tomb. Attending to questions of mobility and immobility of pilgrims and contraband acro