Fields of Expertise:
early modern and modern Middle East
Ottoman Empire
social and cultural history
world history
Recent Publications:
"Fun and Games in Ottoman Aleppo: the Life and Times of a Local Schoolteacher (1835-1865)," in Entertainment among the Ottomans, (eds.) Ebru Boyar and Kate Fleet, Leiden, 2019, 90-120.
"Imperial Crisis and Muslim-Christian Relations in Ottoman Syria and Palestine c. 1770-1830," The Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 58 (2015), 490-531.
Twilight of the Saints: Everyday Religion in Ottoman Syria and Palestine. 2014. Oxford University Press.
“The Legend of the Samarmar: Parades and Communal Identity in Syrian Towns, c. 1500-1800," Past and Present 204 (2009), 89-125.
Everyday Life and Consumer Culture in Eighteenth-Century Damascus, University of Washington Press, 2007.
"Smoking and 'Early Modern Sociability:' the Great Tobacco Debate in the Ottoman Middle East (17th-18th Centuries)," American Historical Review 111 (December 2006), 1352-77.
Recent Awards:
- Fuat Köprülü Prize for Best Book in Ottoman and Turkish Studies; presented in 2015 by the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association for Twilight of the Saints.
- Co-Winner of the Biennial Prize for Best Book in Syrian Studies; presented in 2015 by the Syrian Studies Association for Twilight of the Saints.
Courses taught:
- HST 300: Historical Imagination
- HST 382 Palestine and Israel
- HST 384 Ottoman World (1300-1700)
- HST 385: Late Imperial Middle East (1700-1914)
- HST 386 The Middle East in the Twentieth Century
- HST 490/590 Early Modern World
- HST 490/590 Making of the Modern World (1700-1914)
- HON 407 Mind Your Manners