The Department of History presents: Muslim Mediterranean/Middle Eastern World Search Job Talk.

Giancarlo Casale is a specialist in the history of the early modern Ottoman empire, although he also has interests in the history of geography and cartography, global exploration, and comparative empires. He has just completed my first book, “The Ottoman Age of Exploration,” about the history of Ottoman expansion in the Indian Ocean during the sixteenth century. The book was based on extensive research in the archives of both Turkey and Portugal, and explored the ways in which the growth of the Ottoman Empire was part of the same historical process that witnessed the expansion of numerous other imperial powers, ranging from the overseas empires of Spain and Portugal to rival Islamic states like Mughal India and Safavid Iran. His next major project, tentatively titled “Curiosity and Intolerance: The Paradox of Early Modernity,” is a comparative study of the development of ethnographic modes of writing in early modern Europe and the Ottoman Empire. At the same time he is also engaged in several smaller research projects on topics including corsairs and the development of Ottoman naval technology, the connection between naval power and deforestation in the Mediterranean region, and a geo-historical study of the earthquake of Dubrovnik in 1667.