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Carter V. Findley

Carter V. Findley

Carter V. Findley

Humanities Distinguished Professor

findley.1@osu.edu

Areas of Expertise

  • Islamic History
  • Comparative Empires
  • Power, Culture, and the State

Education

  • Ph.D., Harvard University
  • B.A., Yale University

Carter V. Findley Humanities Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the History Department at Ohio State University. His 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.  

Findley’s newest book, A History of the Ottoman Empire, is under contract to Oxford University Press (New York), where the book is now being edited for publication. 

Findley’s most recently published book is Enlightening Europe on Islam and the Ottomans:  Mouradgea d’Ohsson and His Masterpiece, published by Brill (2019). This is the first thorough study of  d’Ohsson’s career and his Tableau général de l’Empire othoman, both text and engravings.  Everything European statesmen needed to know about law and the state in the Ottoman Empire:  that is what d'Ohsson gave his readers.  The work is also fabulously illustrated.  Its 233 engravings constitute the century’s largest trove of visual imagery on the Ottoman Empire.  So great was the importance attached to the work at the time that d’Ohsson’s Tableau was published simultaneously in two different formats:  3 fully illustrated large folios (Paris, 1787-1820) and 7 partially illustrated octavo volumes (Paris, 1787-1824).

Findley's other recent books include Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity:  A History, 1789-2007, published by Yale University Press in 2010.  Recognized by Choice as one of the two best books of the year on the Middle East, this book won the Joseph Rothschild Prize from the Association for the Study of Nationalism, the Ohio Academy of History Publication Award, and the Turkish Studies Association's Köprülü Book Prize (honorable mention).  His The Turks in World History, published by Oxford University Press, won the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Prize for Middle East Studies: The Âl Mubarak Book Prize. Other notable publications include "An Ottoman Occidentalist in Europe: Ahmed Midhat Meets Madame Gülnar, 1889," in The American Historical Review, vol.103.  Findley’s recent researches have been supported by fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Carter Findley is the author, as well, of two books on administrative reform and development in the late Ottoman Empire: first Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte, 1789-1922, and then Ottoman Civil Officialdom: A Social History (both published by Princeton University Press). The second book won both the Ohio Academy of History Book Award and the M. Fuat Köprülü Book Prize of the Turkish Studies Association. All of Professor Findley's monographs have been translated into Turkish.  The Turks in World History has also been translated into Japanese and Chinese.  

Carter Findley is also the coauthor, with John Rothney, of Twentieth-Century World (seventh revised edition, Wadsworth Cengage).  Findley's services to World history were recognized by the Distinguished Service Award Of the World History Association (2019.  He has also published nearly fifty scholarly articles in English, French, and Turkish.

Carter Findley is an Honorary Member of both the Turkish Academy of Sciences and the Turkish Historical Society. At Ohio State University, he presented the University Distinguished Lecture  and received the Distinguished Scholar Award. He was a visiting lecturer at Bilkent University (Ankara), a visiting professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris), and a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Joint Committee on the Near and Middle East of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council, the American Research Institute in Turkey, the Institute of Turkish Studies, and the Fulbright-Hays Research Fellowship programs of both the U.S. Information Agency and the U.S. Department of Education. He has served as President of both the World History Associati+on and the Turkish Studies Association.

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