The team at SHIFA-ANA is pleased to release the schedule for our 2025 SHIFA-ANA workshop at ANAMED in Istanbul! The program runs from the evening of June 11th through June 13th. Any and all questions should be directed to shifaana.project@rutgers.edu.
Wednesday, June 11
18:00 – 19:30 | Keynote Lecture
Nükhet Varlık, “The Precarious City: New Regimes of Death and Disease in Early Modern Istanbul”
Thursday, June 12
08:30 – 09:00 | Registration and Coffee
09:00 – 09:10 | Welcome Remarks
09:10 – 10:30 | Panel 1: Scaling Crisis: Empire, Environment, and Epidemics
Chair: Nükhet Varlık
John Curry, “Setting the General Crisis of the Long Seventeenth Century in Comparative Contexts: How
Do the Ottomans Fit?”
Antonis Hadjikyriacou, “Between the Mountain and the Plain: The Making of the Cypriot moyenne durée”
Einar Wigen, Alp Eren Topal, and Carlo Trombino, “The Last Great Plague of Istanbul, 1812: An
Epidemic that Changed the Empire”
Benan Grams, “The Road Less Traveled: Uncovering the Regional Networks Behind Cholera’s Arrival in Nineteenth-Century Damascus”
10:30 – 10:45 | Coffee Break
10:45 – 11:45 | Panel 2: Doing Public Health: Materialities, Practices, and Regulations
Chair: (TBA)
Elif Bengüsu Arık, “Ocular Apparatus (Alat-ı Basariye) and the Transformation of Vision in Late
Nineteenth- to Early Twentieth-Century Ottoman Medicine”
Akif Ercihan Yerlioğlu, “Rethinking Medical Innovation in the Early Modern Ottoman World: Between
Theory, Practice, and Circulation”
Berrak Burçak, “Market Practices, Disease, and Social Change: Examining the 1502 Bursa İhtisab
Kanunnamesi and Its Implications for Health in 16th-Century Anatolia”
11:45 – 12:00 | Coffee Break
12:00 – 13:00 | Thematic Workshop: Burçak Özlüdil, “Death and Disease in Digital History”
13:00 – 14:15 | Lunch Break
14:15 – 15:15 | Panel 3: Necrogeographics & Necropolitics I: Death in the City
Chair: Lâle Can
Linda Ratschiller Nasim, “Death in Istanbul 1853–1856: The Management of British and French War
Corpses”
İsmail Yaşayanlar, “The Danger of Death: The Issue of ‘Sanitary Cemeteries’ in the Modern Ottoman
Era”
Can Gümüş-İspir, “Struggle over the Dead: Sanitizing the Burial Practices in Late Ottoman Istanbul”
15:15 – 15:30 | Coffee Break
15:30 – 16:50 | Panel 4: Necrogeographics & Necropolitics II: Archives of Death
Chair: Ebru Aykut
Aliye Öten, “Causes of Death on Tombstones: The Case of a Celveti Graveyard”
Yasemin Ayyıldız, “Certification of Death in the 19th-Century Ottoman Empire”
Murat Ergin, “Social History and Death Announcements (1950-2009)”
Aslı Zengin, “Death Document”
16:50 – 17:10 | Coffee Break
17:10 – 18:10 | Panel 5: Between the Living and the Dead: Liminalities and Afterlives
Chair: Abdurrahman Atçıl
Hüseyin Göcen, “Vampires of Plague: Vampire Questions from Provincial Jurisconsults’ Fatwa
Collections in Early Modern Ottoman Empire”
Anahit Galstyan, “The Healing Dead: Sensing Sanctity in Armenian Funerary Landscapes”
Meyçem Ceren Ulu, “Tracing Egyptian Mummies: Provenance and Presentation in Turkish and German
Museums”
Friday, June 13
8:30 – 9:00 | Coffee
09:00 – 10:20 | Panel 6: Spaces of Death, Disease, and Healing
Chair: Gülhan Balsoy
Murat Tozan, “Healing, Disease, and Death in Roman Pergamon”
Hande Altınay, “Were Ottoman Quarantines Places of Healing or Death? The Case of Ottoman Iraq in
the Nineteenth Century”
Burçak Özlüdil, “Behind Walls: The Hidden Worlds of Ottoman Asylums”
Zehra Betül Atasoy, “Burned but Inhabited: Disease and Social Exclusion in Fire-Damaged Areas of Early
Republican Istanbul”
10:20 – 10:40 | Coffee Break
10:40 – 11:40 | Panel 7: States of Vulnerability: Young Bodies between Death and Disease
Chair: Leyla Kayhan
Ali Metin Büyükkarakaya, “Infectious Diseases and Mortality in the Subadult Population of Neolithic
Period Tepecik-Çiftlik”
Atacan Atakan, “From Vulnerability to Vitality: The Child’s Body, Disease, and Nationhood in Children’s
Magazines during the Late Ottoman Empire”
Tuğba Esat Örengül, “Child Psychiatry in Turkey: The Pioneers and the First Texts (1916-1960)”
11:40 – 12:00 | Coffee Break
12:00 – 13:00 | Panel 8: Biopolitics: From Empire to Republic
Chair: Cihangir Gündoğdu
Efe Erünal, “Mortality, Age Structure, and Urbanization in Western Anatolia: Transitioning from the
Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic (1840s–1990s)”
Merve Kardelen Bilir Uslu, “The Measurement of Physical Disability in Modern History of Turkey: The
Search for Assistance, Rights, and Treatment (1920s-1960s)”
Servando Z. Hinojosa, “Falls and the Hidden Toll of Death and Injury in Anatolia”
13:00 – 14:15 | Lunch Break
14:15 – 15:15 |Panel 9: Roundtable: Death, Disease, and Healing Across Disciplines
Chair: Şima İmşir
Yasin Ilgaz, “Ancient Anatolian Wisdom for Modern Healing: Revisiting Peganum harmala”
Gizem Sivri, “Building (Pathological) Life: Sustaining Pathogenesis via Architecture”
Ayşe Gülsezer, “Digital Imaginaries of Disease in Anatolia: AI-Generated Narratives of Syphilis”
Remziye Seçen, “Comparative Analysis of 19th-Century Quarantine Practices in the Ottoman Empire and
Europe”
Batuğhan Tatar, “Encounters with Death: William of Rubruck’s Journey to the Kipchak Steppe in the
13th Century”
15:15 – 15:30 | Coffee Break
15:30 – 16:30 | Panel 10: Burdened Bodies: Anger, Madness, and Disability
Chair: Özge Ertem
İrem Yıldız, “Disease and Disability: The Medicalization of Blindness in Late Ottoman Istanbul”
Burcu Belli, “Rationalizing Madness: Healing and Death in the Late Ottoman Empire”
Yağmur Çelik, “Between Vice and Virtue: Examining Anger through Medicine, Morality, and Gender in
the Early Modern Ottoman Thought”
16:30 – 16:45 | Coffee Break
16:45 – 18:00 | Concluding Roundtable Discussion: Rethinking Death and Disease in Anatolia
Anna Akasoy, Koray Durak, Faisal Husain
Download the program here: