Ottoman and Turkish Studies at CEU

Are you interested in exploring the Ottoman Empire and its legacies in the Balkans, Central Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean? If so, the Department of Medieval Studies and the Department of History at Central European University in Budapest announce the new concentration in Ottoman and Turkish Studies that provides students with an excellent opportunity to discover novel perspectives on the Ottoman past and formulate new research questions.     

Central European University offers a unique and exciting combination of courses in Ottoman history and languages, an expertise of scholars in a variety of related fields, and proximity to premier research archives and libraries that house Ottoman collections (e.g., in Budapest, Vienna, Sofia, Sarajevo, etc.). By setting up a dialogue between regional and central imperial perspectives, our curriculum in Ottoman and Turkish Studies presents an innovative framework to study the social and cultural history of the longest-lasting Islamic empire as well as its legacies in its various successor states. Administered through the Departments of Medieval Studies and History, Ottoman and Turkish Studies at CEU draw on a wide range of courses in early Islamic, Byzantine, Renaissance European, Habsburg, Russian, modern Balkan and Middle Eastern history which highlight the Departments’ particular strength in comparative history of empires from the medieval to modern eras.  

The concentration in Ottoman and Turkish Studies at CEU combines empirical research and language study with reflection on cutting-edge methodological and theoretical developments in social sciences and humanities.  In the academic year 2010/2011 the University launched its Source Language Teaching Group that currently provides students with opportunity to study modern and Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, Ancient Greek, Serbian, Latin and Classical Hebrew, while we expect to offer Armenian, Georgian and Modern Greek starting next academic year. This broad framework that conceives of the Ottoman Empire as an imperial system composed of mutiple regional units with their cultural and linguistic specificities that were in a productive dialogue with, and in many ways, defined the imperial center is also reflected in the courses offered by CEU's faculty.

With a 6:1 student/professor ratio and an extremely international group of students and faculty CEU provides an excellent forum for intense dialogue and exchange across cultural, linguistic, geographic, and disciplinary boundaries.