Rate My Professor Charles Wilkins

Charles Wilkins serves as Associate Professor of Middle Eastern History in the Department of History at Wake Forest University, where he joined the faculty in 2006 as Assistant Professor and was promoted in 2012. Prior appointments include Assistant Professor of Islamic World History at Colorado College from 2005 to 2006 and Visiting Lecturer in Middle Eastern History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2003 to 2005. He holds a B.A. in History from Duke University (1988), an M.A. in Islamic History from The Ohio State University (1996), and a Ph.D. in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University (2006).

Wilkins specializes in the social history of the Ottoman Empire during the Early Modern Period (1500-1800), focusing on the long-term social and cultural integration of Arab lands into the empire, particularly through studies of Ottoman Aleppo. His major publication is the monograph Forging Urban Solidarities: Ottoman Aleppo, 1640-1700 (Brill, 2010). Key articles include “Slavery and Household Formation in Ottoman Aleppo, 1640-1700” (Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 2013) and “The Self-Fashioning of an Ottoman Urban Notable: Ahmad Efendi Tahazâde (d. 1773)” (Osmanlı Araştırmaları/The Journal of Ottoman Studies, 2014). He has contributed chapters such as “Masters, Servants, and Slaves: Household Formation in the Ottoman Empire” (The Ottoman World, Routledge, 2012) and “Ibrahim b. Khidr al-Qaramani (d. 1557), A Merchant and Urban Notable of Early Ottoman Aleppo” (Living in the Ottoman Realm, Indiana University Press, 2016). Wilkins is currently completing Lives Astride: A Social and Cultural History of Ottoman Aleppo, 1516-1918. Among his awards are the National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Research Fellowship (2015-2016), Stroupe Award for Excellence in Research from the Wake Forest History Department (2012-2013), Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Research Fellowship (1999-2000), American Research Institute in Turkey Research Fellowships (2010, 1999), and Turkish Studies Association Graduate Student Paper Prize (1996). He co-directs Wake Forest's Middle East & South Asia Studies Program.