Ersoy, Ahmet Abdullah

Boğaziçi Üniversitesi

Research Topic: Late Ottoman New Media: Reading, Visuality and Historical Experience During the Hamidian Era (1876-1909)

Dr. Ersoy is Associate Professor at the History Department at Boğaziçi University. His work deals with the history of the Late Ottoman Empire with a special focus on the changing role and status of visual culture during a period of westernizing change. A major aim in his work has been to link visuality with rising discourses of locality and authenticity in the late Ottoman context, thereby situating art and architecture within the broader fields of cross-cultural studies and historiography. His recent book, Architecture and the Late Ottoman Historical Imaginary, links the visual traces of modernity, particularly the newfangled revivalist movement in art and architecture, with changing perceptions of the historical past in the late Ottoman realm. In its cross-disciplinary scope, the book provides an intellectual depth of field to the historicist pursuits of late Ottoman artists and architects, investigating the rise of a modern culture of authenticity in the late Ottoman context. Dr. Ersoy’s current project involves a study of photography and other means of mechanical image-reproduction in the late Ottoman world. Particularly focusing on the late nineteenth-century illustrated journals, he aims to understand the broader impact of this new media regime in the context of Ottoman culture.