Jordan Cannon

Jordan Cannon is a PhD candidate in history and Middle Eastern studies. She holds a BA in history and Middle Eastern studies from Columbia University and specializes in the social, architectural, and political history of the early modern Ottoman Empire. Her doctoral research, which has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, American Research Institute in Turkey, and Harvard University, examines the relationship between fires and urban transformation in Istanbul from the Zindankapı Fire of 1539 to Mahmud II's death in 1839. Challenging widespread, essentialist assumptions about Ottoman fatalism and unbridled Muslim opportunism in the wake of fires, her work demonstrates that Muslims and non-Muslims navigated complex alliances and conflicts within neighborhoods to preserve "old" boundaries more often than to remake them. Her research has been published in the Journal of Religious Minorities under Muslim Rule, the Journal of Digital Islamicate Research, and Keshif: E-Journal for Ottoman-Turkish Micro Editions.