Tozsuz Evrak is a
primary source blog that pairs incisive commentary with original historical
materials related to people, creatures, and things within and beyond the Ottoman Empire.
Like Joni
Mitchell, Jay Gatsby, and Atatürk, Tozsuz Evrak was originally called something
else. Inaugurated as Tozlu Evrak
(Turkish for “dusty documents”) in the summer of 2012, the site’s founders altered
the name in the, well, name of avoiding false advertising. The documents on the site, after all,
weren’t dusty but dustless.
So this is what gives you Tozsuz Evrak, or “documents without dust.” It features posts grounded in primary source analysis that zoom in on the quotidian experiences of Ottomans, post-Ottomans, and nOttomans while also zooming out to make broader claims about the nature of writing history. On their own, the posts are at worst mildly amusing trivia. Put together, however, the fragments of stories often elided from standard academic fare amount to a mosaic of the diversity of the everyday, bringing together, for example, hyenas, guns, and circumcision in interesting and complex ways.
So this is what gives you Tozsuz Evrak, or “documents without dust.” It features posts grounded in primary source analysis that zoom in on the quotidian experiences of Ottomans, post-Ottomans, and nOttomans while also zooming out to make broader claims about the nature of writing history. On their own, the posts are at worst mildly amusing trivia. Put together, however, the fragments of stories often elided from standard academic fare amount to a mosaic of the diversity of the everyday, bringing together, for example, hyenas, guns, and circumcision in interesting and complex ways.
We were thinking of saying something here about how the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but we’re not mathematicians. We’re historians, generally, or at least history-curious people. And that means our hard drives, flash drives, sky drives, and soon, we expect, outside-of-the-solar system drives (to say nothing of our hippocampi) are filled with primary sources, many of which attracted our attention due to some vivid detail or arresting twist, even if – and sometimes especially because – these newspapers, memoirs, photos, songs, or, yes, dusty documents, had no connection to our research topic.
It is these primary source documents – digitally available, and without the dust – that accompany each article on our site. By making high-quality primary source documents accessible to anyone with a computer, Tozsuz Evrak promotes the debate of history with an eye toward open-access technologies of the future."
|
|
|
|
|
Samuel Dolbee editor-in-chief and frequent contributor
Sam is a joint Ph.D.candidate in History and Middle
East and Islamic Studies at New York University studying infrastructure
and
disease in the late Ottoman and mandate era Middle East. He currently
lives in
Istanbul, where in addition to his work with Tozsuz Evrak, he is a regular guest on
the Ottoman History Podcast. He is an enthusiast of legumes, fiction,
and watering plants.
Chris Gratien web manager and frequent contributor (academia.edu)
Chris is completing a Ph.D. at Georgetown University's Department of
history. His dissertation research examines issues of settlement,
ecology, and migration in late Ottoman and early Republican Anatolia. As
executive producer of Ottoman History Podcast, his main side projects
involve expanding outlets for academic production to more accessible and
engaging digital formats. Chris used to have a wide variety of other
interests but now spends most of his time on history. He is currently
based in Istanbul.
Michael Talbot frequent contributor
Michael was awarded a Ph.D.at the School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of London in 2013 and is currently on a year's
lectureship in Ottoman history at the University of St Andrews. His main
research projects include Ottoman-British relations in the 17th and
18th century, mercantile disputes and commercial networks, and the
impact of and Ottoman responses to European pirates in the Eastern
Mediterranean. Although an early modernist at heart, he is increasingly
interested in late modern Ottoman history, with new projects forming on
the relationship between urban space and political discourse Palestinian
port cities, the Ottoman Hebrew press, and a cultural history of
medicine at the turn of the twentieth century.
Our Authors
Jennifer Manoukian
is a graduate student in the Department of Middle East, South Asian and
African Studies at Columbia. She focuses on the history and literature
of Ottoman and diasporan Armenian communities.
Nicholas Danforth
Nir Shafir
Reem Bailony
Zoe Griffith is a PhD candidate in History at Brown University. Her research focuses on Ottoman Egypt and political economy in the eastern Mediterranean in the long eighteenth century.
Nicholas Danforth
Nir Shafir
Reem Bailony
Zoe Griffith is a PhD candidate in History at Brown University. Her research focuses on Ottoman Egypt and political economy in the eastern Mediterranean in the long eighteenth century.
OUR FRIENDS
Tozsuz Evrak is a member of MENAlab, a constellation of independent internet destinations focused on the history, society, and culture of the Middle East and North Africa. We are dedicated to presenting open-access and advertising-free content generated by scholars and researchers from a variety of disciplines. Currently our sites include:
Ottoman History Podcast: a weekly internet radio program in English and Turkish offering interviews with scholars and researchers on emerging topics in the study of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East (editors: Chris Gratien | Emrah Safa Gürkan)
Tozsuz Evrak: a close to the source document blog displaying primary sources and archival materials intended for use by researchers (editors: Samuel Dolbee | Chris Gratien)
Afternoon Map: a cartography blog dedicated to presenting quality maps with a maximum pixel-to-word ratio (editor: Nicholas Danforth)
HAZİNE: a guide to researching the middle east and beyond (editors: Nir Shafir | Christopher Markiewicz)
Stambouline: a history blog where travel and art/architecture of the Ottoman Empire meet (editor: Emily Neumeier)
tajine: an academic blog and podcast about the Maghreb, launching January 2014 (editors: Graham Cornwell | Alma Heckman | Chris Gratien)
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire