Şen, A. Tunç

Assistant Professor

Office Hours 

Fall 2024: Mondays, 9:45 - 11:45 AM

Education

Ph.D. – University of Chicago
M.A. – University of Chicago
B.A and M.A. – Sabancı University, Istanbul

Interests and Research

A. Tunç Şen specializes in the history of the Ottoman Empire and its many connections with the early modern world. As a social and cultural historian of intellectual practices, Şen primarily focuses on how people perceived the world, the frameworks into which they fit information and beliefs, and the social, political, economic, and emotional structures that shaped and were shaped by their ways of knowing.

In his first book, Forgotten Experts: Astrologers, Science, and Authority in the Ottoman Empire (Stanford University Press, forthcoming in 2025), Şen examines how the expertise and authority of a group of (occult) scientific practitioners were constructed and contested in the early modern imperial context.

Şen is currently working on two additional book projects. The first focuses on the history of education and scholarly life in the early modern Ottoman world, examined through the lenses of microhistory and the history of emotions. The second, tentatively titled “Manuscripts in Motion: Ottoman Subjects, Islamic Scripts, and Orientalist Pursuits in Early Modern Europe,” explores Islamic manuscripts of Ottoman provenance that found their way into European collections during the early modern period as war booty and pirates’ spoils.

Şen is also a member of an international research project, Geographies and Histories of the Ottoman Supernatural Tradition (GHOST): Exploring Magic, the Marvelous, and the Strange in Ottoman Mentalities, funded by the European Research Council (ERC). Prior to joining Columbia University, Şen taught courses on Ottoman history and paleography and Modern Middle East history at Leiden University.

 

Publications

Book

Forgotten Experts: Astrologers, Science, and Authority in the Ottoman Empire, 1450-1600 (Stanford University Press, to be published in 2025)

Select Articles in Peer-Reviewed Journals and Volumes

“The Science and Politics of Chronology in Late Medieval and Early Modern Ottoman
Almanacs,” in Osmanlı’da İlm-i Tarih, eds. Ercüment Asil, Cemal Atabaş, Zahit Atçıl
(Istanbul: İSAR, 2023), 47-71.

“The Emergence of New Scholarly Languages: The Case of Ottoman Turkish (13th -19th
Centuries),” in Routledge Handbook on Science in the Islamicate World, ed. Sonja Brentjes (New York: Routledge), 240-7.

“Current Debates and Emerging Trends in the History of Science in Premodern
Islamicate Societies (co-authored with N. Fancy, J. Stearns, S. Brentjes, S. Trigg, N. Gardiner, N. Varlık, M. Melvin-Koushki, S.N. Haq),” History of Science 61/2 (2023): 123-178.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00732753231154690

“The Emotional Universe of Insecure Scholars in the Early Modern Ottoman Hierarchy
of Learning,” IJMES 53/2 (2021): 315-21.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743821000374

“Manuscripts on the Battlefields: Early Modern Ottoman Subjects in the European
Theatre of War and Their Textual Relations to the Supernatural in their Fight for
Survival,” Aca’ib: Occasional Papers on the Ottoman Perceptions of the
Supernatural 2 (2021): 77-106.

“The Sultan’s Syllabus Revisited: Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Madrasa Libraries and
the Question of Canonization,” Studia Islamica 116 (2021): 198-235.
https://doi.org/10.1163/19585705-12341441

“Letters of an Insecure Scholar, 1553; Zaifi, d. after 1557,” in  The Ottoman World: A
Cultural History Reader, 1450–1700, eds. Hakan T. Karateke and Helga
Anetshofer (Oakland: University of California Press, November 2021), 1-6.

“Authoring and Publishing in the Age of Manuscripts: the Columbia University Copy
of an Ottoman Compendium of Sciences with Marginal Glossing,” Philological
Encounters 5/3-4 (2020): 353-377. https://doi.org/10.1163/24519197-BJA10008

“Books on Astrology, Astronomical Tables, and Almanacs in the Library Inventory of
Bayezid II (co-authored with Cornell H. Fleischer,” in Treasures of Knowledge: An
Inventory of the Ottoman Palace Library (1502/3-1503/4), eds. Gülru Necipoğlu,
Cemal Kafadar, Cornell H. Fleischer (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 767-821.

“Reading the Stars at the Ottoman Court: Bāyezīd II (r. 886/1481-918/1512) and
his Celestial Interests,” Arabica 64/3-4 (2017): 557-608.
https://doi.org/10.1163/15700585-12341461

“Practicing Astral Magic in Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Istanbul: A Treatise on
Talismans attributed to Ibn Kemāl (d. 1534),” Journal of Magic, Ritual, and
Witchcraft 12 (2017): 66- 88. https://doi.org/10.1353/mrw.2017.0005

“Rasattan Takvime: 15. ve 16. Yüzyıllarda Osmanlı Dünyasında Astrolojinin Yeri
Üzerine Bazı Gözlemler,” [From Astronomical Observations to Almanac
Prognostications: Revisiting the Role of Astrology in the fifteenth-and sixteenth-
century Ottoman World] in Osmanlı’da İlim ve Fikir Dünyası, ed. Ömer Mahir
Alper et al. (Istanbul: Klasik, 2016), 227-250.

“A Mirror for Princes, A Fiction for Readers: Habname of Veysi and Dream
Narratives in Ottoman-Turkish Literature,” Journal of Turkish Literature 8 (2011):
41-64.

 

Courses 

  • The Ottoman Empire (Global Core survey)
  • Contemporary Civilization I-II
  • Manuscripts of the Muslim World
  • Topics in Ottoman History, 1300-1700
  • Occult in the Muslim Past
  • Margins of Historiography: Ottoman-Turkish Tradition (co-taught with Prof. Zeynep Çelik)
  • Research Seminar for PhD Students
  • Readings in Ottoman Historical Documents

 

Awards

 

Grants & Fellowships

  • Heyman Center Fellowships, Columbia University (2024-2025)
  • The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TUBITAK) Research Grant
    (2023-2026)
  • Humanities War & Peace Initiative Grant, Columbia University (2021).
  • Hettleman Junior Faculty Summer Research Grant, Columbia University (2020).
  • Lenfest Junior Faculty Development Grant, Columbia University (2019).
  • Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Humanities, McGill University (2016-2018) (Declined).
  • Provost’s Dissertation Completion Fellowship, University of Chicago (2015-2016).
  • Stuart Tave Teaching Fellowship, University of Chicago (2015-2016).
  • SSRC International Dissertation Research Fellowship (2014-2015).
  • American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT) Dissertation Fellowship (2013-2014).
  • Newberry Library Dissertation Seminar for Historians Fellowship (2012-2013).

 

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