News Release, St. Mary’s College of Maryland
St. Mary’s City, MD- St. Mary’s College of Maryland Associate Professor of Religious Studies Betül Ba?aran hosted a session of Material Witness on April 25 at the Deck B. Seminar Room at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.
Titled “Cross-Cultural Intimacy and Marriage between Europeans and Ottoman Women in the Early Modern Era,”Ba?aran examined the common cross-cultural sexual relations between European men and Ottoman (mostly Greek and Armenian Orthodox) women during the early modern period in Ottoman commercial centers, port cities, and islands according to select European sources in the Folger collection.
Material Witness, a Folger Institute fellowships program, is designed to bring fellows-in-residence into conversation with one another and with local scholars. The series allows them to consider the value of the material object itself: the books, manuscripts, works of art, or historical artifacts that are essential to their work, thought-processes, and ideas.
Ba?aran received a fellowship for the academic year 2018-19. The fellowship provided support for up to a three-month residence at the Folger. She was invited back to lead this session based on her sabbatical project.
