Course Objectives
- The purpose of the course is to introduce graduate students to the history of cultural production in the Ottoman Empire in the early modern and modern periods.
- Through a thematic and chronological framework, lectures will help trace the transformation and contours of Ottoman objects and cultural practices in their social and historical dimensions, including histories of artistic production, patronage, collecting, and display.
- Students will be introduced to selected historical objects from Ottoman visual and material culture, as well as a range of primary sources and archival materials, to foster discussion and help them chose their own object-specific research topics.
- Students will be familiarised with some ongoing critical debates on Ottoman history and will be encouraged to develop methodologies to study cultural production in a historical and cross-cultural perspective, spanning the disciplines of material culture studies, art and architectural history, and cultural studies.