Main content start

Ottoman Empire and Middle East

The graduate program in the Ottoman Empire and Middle East field offers the opportunity to specialize both in Ottoman and Modern Middle Eastern history, from the fifteenth century to the present. The geographical scope of the OEME field roughly encompasses Southeast Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Black Sea basin, Turkey, and the Arab World. However, the OEME field also challenges static geographical categories and offers dynamic spatial and temporal perspectives, emphasizing shifting borders and frontiers, transregional networks and connections, as well as movements of people, ideas and objects within and beyond the Ottoman World and the Modern Middle East. The Stanford OEME program aims to train graduate students to conduct rigorous empirical research, to examine archival material and manuscripts, and to address analytical and conceptual notions/problems in early modern and late modern history. While students are expected to specialize in different topics, problems, regions and periods in Ottoman and/or Modern Middle East history in the global context, we also encourage them to develop holistic visions incorporating social and economic transformations, political and institutional processes, cultural life, gender relations and interdependence between human society and nature, and human and non-human worlds. The OEME field also supports students who intend to expand their research in digital humanities.