Gratien

Chris Gratien

Assistant Professor

Contact
Nau 356
Office Hours: On leave Fall 2019-Spring 2020

Field & Specialties

Environmental History
Middle East
Ottoman Empire
Social History

Education

Ph.D., History - Georgetown University, 2015

M.A., Arab Studies - Georgetown University, 2008

B.A., History - Le Moyne College, 2005

Publications

Selected Articles and Book Chapters

"The Ottoman Quagmire: Malaria, Swamps, and Settlement in the Late Ottoman Mediterranean,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 49 No. 4 (2017).

"Pilavdan Dönen İmparatorluk: Meclis-i Mebusan’da Sıtma ve Çeltik Tartışmaları” translated by Burcu Kurt in Osmanlı'dan Cumhuriyet'e Salgın Hastalıklar, eds. Burcu Kurt and İsmail Yaşayanlar. Tarih Vakfı, 2017.

“The Sick Mandate of Europe: Local and Global Humanitarianism in French Cilicia, 1918-1922,” Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, Vol. 3 No. 1 (May 2016). 

Book Reviews and Essays

Review of “Ottoman Rural Societies and Economies” ed. Elias Kolovos, Turcica Vol 49 (2018).

Review of “The Arid Lands: History, Power, Knowledge” by Diana K. Davis, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol 49 No 2 (May 2017) 341-342.

Review of “Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World: the Ottoman Experience, 1347-1600” by Nükhet Varlık in Osmanlı Araştırmaları / The Journal of Ottoman Studies, No. 48 (2016) 482-487.

Review of “Shattered Dreams of Revolution: From Liberty to Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire” by Bedross Der Matossian in Arab Studies Journal, Vol. 24 No. 1 (Spring 2016) 300-304.

“Ecological Exchanges and Environmental History” in Explorations in History and Globalization, ed. by Catia Antunes and Karwan Fatah-Black, London: Routledge, 2016.

“Ottoman Environmental History: A New Area of Middle East Studies,” Arab Studies Journal, Vol. 20 No. 1 (Spring 2012), 246-254. 

Internet and Popular Press Publications

Ottoman History Podcast

Since 2011, I have been producer of Ottoman History Podcast, a collaborative internet radio program featuring interviews with students and scholars. This playlist contains a selection of interviews. 

 

Current Research

I am currently working on a monograph provisionally titled The Mountains Are Ours: the environmental history of a late Ottoman frontier, which explores a century of ecological change in the Cilicia region of the Eastern Mediterranean between the 1850s and 1950s. My broader work examines issues in the social and environmental history of the modern Middle East.

 

Awards & Honors

2016-17 - Academy Scholar, Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies

2015-16 - Postdoctoral Associate, Yale University Program in Agrarian Studies

2014-15 - ACLS-Mellon Dissertation Completion Fellowship

2012-13 - SSRC International Dissertation Research Fellowship

2009 - ARIT Summer Advanced Turkish Fellowship, Boğaziçi University

2008-09 - Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) Full-Year Fellowship, University of Damascus, Syria

Courses Taught

HIST 2150 - Global Environmental History

HIME 1501 - Intro Seminar: Water, Energy, and Politics in the Middle East

HIME 2002 - History of Middle East and North Africa, 1500-present