Yiğit Akin earned his Ph.D. at the Ohio State University in 2011 and he is a specialist of the history of the modern Middle East. His research interests include social and cultural history of the late Ottoman Empire and Republican Turkey, with a particular focus on the First World War and its aftermath, war and society, nationalism, and social movements. Before joining the faculty at Ohio State, Dr. Akin taught at the College of Charleston and Tulane University where he received the university’s highest teaching award, the Weiss Presidential Award for Undergraduate Teaching. Dr. Akin is the author of two books. The first, Gürbüz ve Yavuz Evlatlar: Erken Cumhuriyet’te Beden Terbiyesi ve Spor (‘Robust and Vigorous Children’: Physical Education and Sports in Early Republican Turkey) (İletişim, 2004), offers a new framework for thinking about the relationship between sports and physical education, governmentality, public health, and nationalism in early republican Turkey. It won the 2005 Distinguished Young Social Scientist Award from the Turkish Social Science Association. His second book, When the War Came Home: The Ottomans’ Great War and the Devastation of an Empire (Stanford, 2018), examines the social and cultural dimensions of Ottoman society’s catastrophic experience of the First World War and analyzes the impact of the war on the empire’s civilian population. When the War Came Home was named a 2018 Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title and won the 2019 Tomlinson Book Prize for the best work of history in English on World War One, awarded by the World War One Historical Association. Dr. Akin is currently working on two book projects on the post-World War I years in the Ottoman Empire from a global perspective, tentatively titled The End of the Ottomans: An International History, and the social and cultural history of death in the late Ottoman Empire and Republican Turkey.
PANEL
Scott C. Levi, PhD Chair of the Department of History College of Arts and Sciences
Carter V. Findley, PhD College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor Emeritus
Professor Findley’s area of research is the history of Islamic civilization, with emphasis on the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East. He also co-founded Ohio State’s world history program.
Jane Hathaway, PhD College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor Emeritus
Professor Hathaway specializes in the Ottoman Empire before 1800, with a focus on the empire’s Arab provinces, particularly Egypt and Yemen.
Kaya Şahin, PhD Vice Provost for Global Strategies and International Affairs, Professor of History
As a historian of the Ottoman Empire in the early modern period, Vice Provost Şahin has emphasized comparative, regional and global perspectives in his publications.
An appointment to an endowed chair is one of academia’s highest honors, and also among its oldest traditions. One of the world’s most notable endowed chairs — the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics — was founded at Cambridge University in 1663. Its prestige can be traced through the lineage of remarkable faculty who have held the chair, including Sir Isaac Newton, Paul Dirac and Stephen Hawking.
At The Ohio State University, endowed chairs are essential to achieving ever-increasing excellence in our missions of teaching, research and patient care. They provide permanent resources to attract and retain eminent faculty and to seize important opportunities. The men and women who hold endowed positions here distinguish Ohio State with their exceptional work.
