Navigating School in Ottoman & Turkish

Service Description

Navigating Graduate School in Ottoman and Turkish Studies This proseminar is designed for students preparing to pursue graduate-level study in Turkish and Ottoman Studies within international academia. Rather than focusing on content mastery alone, the course equips students with the practical and intellectual tools needed to navigate the field: identifying research questions, understanding the academic landscape and its major institutions, developing language and archival competencies, and building a strategic path toward graduate applications and scholarly careers. Students will leave with a clearer sense of the field's disciplinary boundaries, its key debates, and the concrete steps required to position themselves as competitive candidates in international programs. Session 1: Where to Begin, Where to Go? Definitions, Institutions, and Programs Session 2: Applying to Graduate Programs: Strategy and Timelines Session 3: Building an Academic Profile: CVs, Writing Samples, SOPs Session 4: Funding, Fellowships, and Career Planning Session 5: Reading and Engaging with Secondary Scholarship Session 6: Archives and Primary Sources: Where and How to Begin Session 7: Formulating a Research Question and Thesis Topic Session 8: Organizing Your Sources: Reference Managers and Text Editors Session 9: Conference Culture: Crafting Abstracts, Presenting Papers, and Networking Session 10: Publishing in Graduate School: Possibilities and Challenges Özlem Yıldız received her PhD in Art History at Temple University in 2026. She holds an MA in History of Art and Architecture of the Islamic Middle East from SOAS University of London, and another MA in History from Sabancı University. Her doctoral thesis, titled “Illustrating the Lives of the Prophets in Sixteenth-Century Islamic Manucripts”, examines Safavid and Ottoman illustrated manuscripts of Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyā’ (Tales of the Prophets) and related texts in a semiological framework, around the themes of sign, gender, intertextuality, and politics. Dr. Yıldız held research fellowships at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and at ANAMED (Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations). Her research has been supported by The Historians of Islamic Art Association, The Barakat Trust, and TÜBİTAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye), among other institutions.