Ottoman History Podcast

<br> <div class="guest_name"> <a href="https://history.virginia.edu/people/baris-unlu" target="_blank"> with Barış Ünlü </a></div><div class="host_name"> <a href="https://history.virginia.edu/people/chris-gratien" target="_blank">hosted by Chris Gratien</a><a href="https://history.virginia.edu/people/kubra-sagir" target="_blank"> and Kubra Sagir</a></div> <div class="hidden_synopsis"> | What does it mean to be Turkish? In this episode, we examine that question with sociologist Barış Ünlü. In <a href="https://tupress.temple.edu/books/the-turkishness-contract" target="_blank"><i>The Turkishness Contract</i></a>, Ünlü studies the historical process by which Turkishness developed through a contractual relationship between the state and its citizens. In our conversation, we explore the late Ottoman roots of this process, as well as how the experiences of non-Turkish religious and ethnolinguistic groups shed light onto the often unspoken and unconscious behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs that govern Turkishness. We also discuss the book's <a href="https://www.dipnotkitap.com/kitap/turkluk-sozlesmesi/246" target="_blank">wide reception in Turkish</a> and how in its new English translation, Ünlü connects the Turkish experience to global perspectives on race and belonging in the modern world. </div> <a href="https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2026/03/turkishness-contract.html#more">« Click for More »</a>

<br> <div class="guest_name"> <a href="https://history.virginia.edu/people/elizabeth-r-varon" target="_blank"> with Elizabeth Varon </a></div><div class="host_name"> <a href="https://history.virginia.edu/people/chris-gratien" target="_blank">hosted by Chris Gratien</a></div> <div class="hidden_synopsis"> | After the US Civil War, some leaders of the defeated Confederacy followed unusual trajectories, perhaps none more so than James Longstreet, who joined the Republican party to become a proponent of Southern Reconstruction and for a brief period, the Minister Resident to the Ottoman Empire. In this episode, we talk to Elizabeth Varon, author of a new biography of Longstreet, about the rebel-turned-diplomat's brief tenure in the Ottoman capital during the early years of Sultan Abdul Hamid II's reign, and we discuss what Longstreet's experiences reveal about America on the world stage in the shadow of the Civil War and Reconstruction. We also discuss Prof. Varon's personal connection to post-Ottoman Istanbul, as well as her new research about Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, who followed in Longstreet's footsteps some years later on a humanitarian mission to the Ottoman Armenians in Anatolia. </div> <a href="https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2026/03/longstreet.html#more">« Click for More »</a>

<br> <div class="guest_name"> <a href="https://esmatelhalaby.com/" target="_blank"> with Esmat Elhalaby </a></div><div class="host_name"> <a href="https://www.smith.edu/people/susanna-ferguson" target="_blank">hosted by Susanna Ferguson</a></div> <div class="hidden_synopsis"> | How did Palestine become central to anti-imperial movements and thought in the global south? In this episode, Esmat Elhalaby asks how Arabs and South Asians contended with the “parting gifts of empire” in the long twentieth century, often by turning to Palestine. He talks about how Arab writers in conversation with India reinvented Orientalism as a critique of empire and reinterpreted the political possibilities and limitations of Islam as a political force. We close with a discussion of Esmat’s new work on the intellectual history of Gaza, the importance of talking about “bad Palestinians,” and what it means to write history at a time of genocide. </div> <a href="https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2026/02/elhalaby.html#more">« Click for More »</a>

<br> <div class="guest_name"> <a href="https://integrative.gmu.edu/people/sbalakia" target="_blank"> with Sophia Balakian </a></div><div class="host_name"> <a href="https://history.virginia.edu/people/brittany-white" target="_blank">hosted by Brittany White</a><a href="https://history.virginia.edu/people/chris-gratien" target="_blank"> and Chris Gratien</a></div> <div class="hidden_synopsis"> | The word "refugee" might conjure images of families devastated by war fleeing their homeland. But what happens when those who seek asylum abroad do not conform to that image? As Sophia Balakian argues in her new book <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/anthropology/unsettled-families" target="_blank"><i>Unsettled Families: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and the Politics of Kinship</i></a>, the question is one that shapes the case of every refugee seeking a new home abroad in the United States. The Somali and Congolese migrants in her study face an intense vetting process that includes DNA testing to confirm that a refugee family forms a biological unit, creating numerous reasons by which people who have survived war and displacement may be judged "fraudulent" families. In this episode, Balakian is back on the podcast to share an anthropologist's perspective on the history of migration and the politics of kinship in refugee resettlement. </div> <a href="https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2026/01/balakian.html#more">« Click for More »</a>

<br> <div class="guest_name"> <a href="https://library.brown.edu/create/libnews/gwendolyn-collaco/" target="_blank"> featuring Gwendolyn Collaço </a></div><br> <div class="host_name"> <a href="https://independent.academia.edu/AndrasRiedlmayer" target="_blank">with Andras Riedlmayer </a>and <a href="https://pleasuresofpasttimes.com/history/" target="_blank">Paul Drummond</a></div> <div class="hidden_synopsis"> | While killing time at the Booksellers' Row in Westminster, historian and curator Gwendolyn Collaço stumbled on a collection of postcards from early 20th-century Egypt, some featuring the British burlesque artist Miss Kitty Lord. When she realized that the postcards were a set belonging to a single person — none other than Kitty Lord herself — the chance discovery became a research quest that culminated in an exhibition at Harvard Fine Arts Library, presenting a visual time capsule of Belle Époque Cairo that mapped the social and romantic life of a fascinating and little-known figure. In this episode from the Ottoman History Podcast vault, Collaço discusses what she uncovered about Kitty Lord through collaborations with the historian and bibliographer András Riedlmayer and memorobilia shop owner Paul Drummond, who appear in the podcast to share their side of the story. </div> <a href="https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2026/01/kitty-lord.html#more">« Click for More »</a>

<br> <div class="guest_name"> Emine Şahin</div> <div class="host_name"> Sunucu: Can Gümüş</div> <div class="hidden_synopsis"> | Bağdat, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu için coğrafi uzaklığına rağmen merkezî idarenin vazgeçilmez vilayetlerinden biriydi. Tanzimat’tan itibaren bu önem, yalnızca askerî güvenlik veya sınır politikalarıyla sınırlı kalmadı; idarî modernleşme, ekonomik düzenlemeler ve toplumsal kontrol mekanizmalarının uygulandığı başlıca laboratuvarlardan biri haline geldi. II. Meşrutiyet’in ilanı ise bu denemeleri daha iddialı, daha sert ve daha merkezî bir siyasi programa dönüştürdü. Bu bölümde, Dr. Emine Şahin’le birlikte 1908–1917 arasında Bağdat’ta Osmanlı idaresinin dönüşümünü inceliyoruz. Merkezileşme politikalarının sahada nasıl uygulandığını, hangi aktörler aracılığıyla yürütüldüğünü ve yerel toplum tarafından nasıl karşılandığını tartışıyoruz. </div> <a href="https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2025/12/sahin.html#more">« Click for More »</a>

<br> <div class="guest_name"> <a href="https://history.ucsd.edu/people/faculty/shafir.html" target="_blank"> with Nir Shafir </a></div><div class="host_name"> <a href="http://mpatton.faculty.wesleyan.edu" target="_blank">hosted by Maryam Patton</a></div> <div class="hidden_synopsis"> | 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. </div> <a href="https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2025/12/shafir.html#more">« Click for More »</a>