The Sohbet-i Osmani Lecture Series is pleased to present
Amy Singer
2014-15 William D. Loughlin Member, School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study; Department of Middle Eastern & African History, Tel Aviv University
Amy Singer (PhD Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, 1989) was born in Washington, D.C. and teaches Ottoman and Turkish History in the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University. Her research began with an in-depth study of the relations between Ottoman officials and Palestinian peasants, in an effort to move Ottoman agrarian history beyond cataloguing the demography and agricultural production of villages (Palestinian peasants and Ottoman officials, 1994). From the documentary materials of this study there emerged another story, that of an enormous endowed foundation (waqf) for a public kitchen (imaret) established by the wife of Sultan Süleyman I in Jerusalem in the mid-sixteenth century (Constructing Ottoman Beneficence, 2002). The study of one endowment provoked a more general interrogation of Islamic charity (Charity in Islamic Societies, 2008). At present, her projects focus on the city of Edirne/Adrianople and on public kitchens across the Ottoman Empire. In both of these, she is integrating Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a tool for historical research. She spends part of each year doing research in libraries and archives in Turkey, and her books have appeared there in Turkish translations.
Contact: Liz Flanagan
LOCATION:CMES, Room 102, 38 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20150413T160000Z DTEND:20150413T180000Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR