Lecture: - Yeliz Cavus, NELC Doctoral Candidate
In Pursuit of History: The Ottoman Historical Society in the Era of Global Professionalism in Historical Studies
Part of the NELC Department Spring 2018 Lecture Series - "The Near East and Beyond"
LUNCH WILL BE PROVIDED, PLEASE RSVP HERE: https://nelc.osu.edu/neareast-rsvp
Abstract: Just as in Europe, North America and other parts of the world, the beginning of the twentieth century was a time in which history emerged as an independent academic discipline in the Ottoman Empire. The foundation of the Ottoman Historical Society in 1909 (renamed Turkish Historical Society in 1923) under the leadership of the last official chronicler of the empire, Abdurrahman Şeref Efendi (d. 1925) represents a milestone for the institutionalization and professionalization of historical studies in the Ottoman realm. The Ottoman Historical Society provided historians with a new intellectual community and a professional network that was not limited to other Ottoman historians. Members of the Ottoman Historical Society, many of whom were prominent historians of that period, conducted research abroad, attended conferences, and established connections with their fellow Orientalists or Turkologists working in universities, national libraries, museums and archives all around the world. The society also provided an institutional base for hosting international scholars who came to Istanbul for research.
Relying on a variety of sources such as correspondence between the members of the Ottoman Historical Society and their foreign fellows, their memoirs, and archival records, this paper explores the ways in which the members of the Ottoman Historical Society connected themselves to the global network of historians in Europe, Asia and North America. While contextualizing late Ottoman history writing within a global era of historical professionalism, this paper also traces how this global process of professionalization contributed to modern history writing in the late Ottoman and early Republican periods.
Yeliz is a Ph.D. candidate and graduate teaching associate in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. Her dissertation research focuses on international intellectual networks in Istanbul at the turn of the twentieth century. She has received a B.A. in Turkish Language and Literature, a B.A. in History, and an M.A. in History from Boğaziçi University, Istanbul.
