VIRGINIA H. AKSAN, Professor Emeritus of History, McMaster University
Prof. Aksan specializes in eighteenth and early nineteenth century Ottoman history, and teaches courses in Islamic, Middle Eastern and Mediterranean history at McMaster University in Canada. Her courses “European-Muslim Encounters in the Pre-Modern World” and “The Ottomans and the World Around Them” are directly relevant to the topic of the Seminar.
Aksan’s current research interests include trans-imperial intellectual encounters and the circulation of knowledge, and cultures in the pre-modern Mediterranean. Her research focus has been comparative war and society, primarily. This includes frontiers, the exchange of ideas and technology, and the role of the intermediary, eastern and western, in the discussion and perception of military reform. She has other interests in and regularly teaches Ottoman history, Middle East and Islamic history, East-West relations, 18th century European history, historiography and ideology, and most recently, the early modern Mediterranean (1500-1800).
Among her numerous publications, An Ottoman Statesman in War and Peace: Ahmed Resmi Efendi, 1700-1783 (Leiden: Brill, 1995) is a study of an influential Ottoman reformer, reflecting her interest in the Ottoman intellectual milieu and cross-cultural contacts and influences. Ottomans and Europeans: Contacts and Conflicts (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2004) is a collection of fourteen articles on various aspects of the relations between Europe and the Ottoman Empire, and her Ottoman Wars, 1700-1870: an Empire Besieged (Pearson-Longman 2007) examines war as primarily as a form of contact.
M. PINAR EMIRALIOGLU, Associate Professor of History, Sam Houston State University
Pınar Emiralioğlu joined Sam Houston State University in 2014. Prior to that, she was Assistant Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh and also taught at Bilgi University in Istanbul, Turkey. Her main areas of research and teaching include Mediterranean studies, early modern Europe, and early modern Ottoman history.
Her recent book Geographical Knowledge and Imperial Culture in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire explores the reasons for the flurry of geographical works in the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century. Currently, she is working on a new book project which investigates the close relationship between geographical knowledge and imperial politics in the Ottoman Empire during the eighteenth century.
ERIC DURSTELER, Professor of History, Brigham Young University
Eric Dursteler joined the History Department of Brigham Young University in 1998. He earned a BA (1988) and MA (1992) from BYU, and an MA (1994) and PhD (2000) from Brown University. He is a former Fulbright fellow, NEH fellow, and in 2006-2007 was a fellow of the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy. He works on the early modern Mediterranean, identity, conversion and the history of food, and teaches a wide range of courses. His research focuses primarily on gender, culture and religion in the early modern Mediterranean. He is editor of the News on the Rialto, and book review editor for the Journal of Early Modern History.
Renegade Women: Gender, Identity and Boundaries in the Early Modern Mediterranean. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011
Venetians in Constantinople: Nation, Identity and Coexistence in the Early Modern Mediterranean. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006; paperback edition, 2008