E523 | How did ordinary Ottoman subjects experience the momentous changes that made our modern world? This episode explores that question through the history of the Çukurova region of southern Turkey. As our guest Chris Gratien has argued in a new book entitled The Unsettled Plain: An Environmental History of the Late Ottoman Frontier, Çukurova can be studied as a microcosm of social and environmental change in the late Ottoman Empire. In our conversation, we explore how the approaches of environmental history can offer a fresh perspective on the political history of the Tanzimat period, and we discuss how the history of malaria -- an ancient disease -- sheds light on a modern experience of displacement and dispossession for rural communities in the Ottoman Empire and beyond.
More at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2022/03/gratien.html
Chris Gratien is Assistant Professor of History at University of Virginia, where he teaches classes on global environmental history and the Middle East. His first book, The Unsettled Plain: An Environmental History of the Late Ottoman Frontier, explores the social and environmental transformation of the Adana region of Southern Turkey during the 19th and 20th century.
Susanna Ferguson is Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies at Smith College. She writes and teaches on the history of gender, sexuality, and political thought in the modern Arab world.
CREDITS
Episode No. 523
Release Date: 11 March 2022
Recording Location: Northampton, MA
Sound production by Chris Gratien
Music: Ruhi Su - Kalktı Göç Eyledi Avşar Elleri / İskan Türküsü (digitized by Chris Gratien); Seyfettin Sucu - Canım Anzılha (digitized by Chris Gratien); A.A. Aalto - Canyon; Pictures of the Floating World - Waves; Spent Lemons - The Hollow Plain
Bibliography and images courtesy of Chris Gratien
Additional thanks to Sam Dolbee
