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About Betül
Betül Başaran is Professor of History at St. Mary's College of Maryland, where she contributes to the History Department and programs in Religious Studies, Asian Studies, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, which she coordinates. She holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago (2006), an M.A. in Ottoman History from Bilkent University (1997), and a B.A. in International Relations from Bilkent University (1994). Her research centers on the social, economic, legal, and political transformations in the Ottoman Empire and Islamic Middle East, with emphasis on urban history, policing, artisans, migration, cross-cultural intimacies, and women in Muslim societies during early modern and modern periods. She employs comparative approaches highlighting interactions between the Muslim world, Europe, and the Mediterranean, drawing from extensive work in Ottoman archives. Başaran has taught Ottoman Turkish at the University of Chicago (2000-2003) and Georgetown University (2015 as Visiting Professor of Ottoman History).
Başaran has served at St. Mary's College of Maryland since 2004, progressing from instructor (2004-2007) and assistant professor (2007-2011) to associate professor (2011-2019) and professor (2019-present) in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies. Her monograph Selim III, Social Control and Policing in Istanbul at the End of the Eighteenth Century: Between Crisis and Order was published by Brill in 2014. Key publications include the co-authored chapter “Some Observations on Istanbul’s Artisans during the Reign of Selim III (1789–1808)” in Suraiya Faroqhi’s Bread from the Lion’s Mouth (Berghahn Books, 2015), “A Princess in Vogue - A Brief Essay on Niloufer” in An Eye for Couture (Prestel, 2024), and contributions to Brill’s Companions to European History. Major awards encompass the Fulbright Global Scholar Award (2020-2021) for research on Ottoman princesses Niloufer and Durrushehvar, Folger Shakespeare Library Virtual Fellowship (2023-2024) and short-term fellowship (2018-2019), and directorship of the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar “Transcending Boundaries: The Ottoman Empire, Europe and the Mediterranean World, 1500-1800” (2016). She has presented at the Library of Congress, international conferences in Paris and Istanbul, and was a writing fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (April 2026) during her 2025-2026 sabbatical.
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