My intellectual interests span world regions, disciplines, past and present.
After a year of study in Iran and Afghanistan, I pursued graduate course work in literature, sociology and history, completing a Ph.D. on the history of the Middle East. An article that traces the roots of neoliberalism, "An Ancien R茅gime Revisted: Privatization and Political Economy in the 18th Century Ottoman Empire," (Politics & Society 1993) won the Turkish Studies Association鈥檚 脰mer Lutfi Barkan Article Prize and remains one of the most widely cited articles in the field.
Theories of state formation, histories of Mediterranean communities and Muslim societies, the transformation of market systems and the making of global capitalism are topics addressed by my research. A new book-length project, a historical sociology of ethno-religious exclusion before the nation-state, is under contract. These projects have been supported by international and national grants (the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Research Institute in Turkey, the American Council of Learned Societies, 成人大片's S.A.R.C., the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, Ko莽 University, Istanbul, Turkey).
I currently teach seminars and lectures on the following subjects: consumerism (HIST 241), the historiography of the Ottoman Empire (HIST 337), and the origins of modern capitalism (HIST 808). In 2016-17, Prof. Husain and I will co-teach a new lecture, 鈥淚slamophobia: From the Crusaders to Donald J. Trump.鈥
Publications
- 2015 Lecture. 鈥漌hy Economic History Matters: Credit, Alterity and Intermediation in the Pre-Modern Mediterranean.鈥 Mediterranean Crossings Workshop, Yale University.
- 2013 Article. 鈥淢igrants in Chains: On the Enslavement of Muslims in Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe.鈥(Special Issue: Islam, Immigration, and Identity) Religions.
- 2011 Book. Osmanl谋 Ancien R茅gime鈥檌: Modern Devlet Yeniden D眉艧眉nmek. (Istanbul: Ileti艧m Yayinevi) (revised, translation of Tocqueville in the Ottoman Empire [Brill, 2004]).
- 2011 Chapter. "Cosmopolis, Islampolis: Ottoman Urbanity between Myth, Memory and Post-Modernity." in Cosmopolitanisms in Muslim Contexts ed. Derryl N. MacLean (University of Edinburgh Press).
- 2010 Article. "Is there a Moral Economy of State Formation? Religious Minorities and Repertoires of Regime Integration in the Middle East and Western Europe, 600-1614." Theory & Society.
- 2007 Chapter. "A Travelogue Manqu茅? The Accidental Itinerary of a Maltese Priest in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean." A Faithful Sea, The Religious Culture of the Mediterranean, 1200-1700 ed. Adnan A. Husain and K. E. Fleming (One World).
- 2000 Chapter. "The Age of Tulips: Confluence and Conflict in Early Modern Consumer Culture (1500-1730)." in Consumption Studies and the History of the Ottoman Empire ed. Donald Quataert (State University of New York Press).
- 1999 Chapter. "Citizens in Search of a State: The Limits of Political Participation in the Late Ottoman Empire, 1808-1914." in Extending Citizenship, Reconfiguring States ed. Michael Hanagan and Charles Tilly (Rowman and Littlefield).
