Ep. 4 | Podcasting and the Islamic History Classroom | Chris Gratien and Dana Sajdi

Harvard Islamica Podcast

In this collaboration between the Harvard Islamica Podcast and the Ottoman History Podcast (OHP), we discuss OHP's new series called "The Making of the Islamic World," using podcasts in the classroom, and engaging in public-facing history in the changing landscape of scholarship in the humanities. Chris Gratien, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Virginia and producer and co-creator of OHP, shares his experiences as a long-time producer of public-facing scholarship through OHP and how he created and used the 10-part, multi-vocal series on "The Making of the Islamic World" to expose his students to diverse methods and perspectives on a millennium of Islamic history in his remote teaching amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Dana Sajdi, Associate Professor of History at Boston College, talks about her course on Ottoman history, "Podcasting the Ottomans," and the importance of scholars adapting to the new realities of how the internet is changing the academic profession.

Chris Gratien is Assistant Professor of History at University of Virginia, where he teaches classes on global environmental history and the Middle East. He is currently preparing a monograph about the environmental history of the Cilicia region of the former Ottoman Empire from the 1850s until the 1950s.

Dana Sajdi is Associate Professor of Middle Eastern History at Boston College. In addition to authoring The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the 18th Century Levant, she is editor of Ottoman Tulips, Ottoman Coffee: Leisure and Lifestyle in the Eighteenth Century (I.B. Tauris, 2008; in Turkish, Koc University Press, 2014).

Links: "The Making of the Islamic World" Series: www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/p/the-maki…world.html "Podcasting the Ottomans" Course at Boston College: mediakron.bc.edu/ottomans "Podcasting the Ottomans" Interview: www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2017/04/po…omans.html Twitter: @OttomanHistory and @HarvardIslamic

Credits and transcript: islamicstudies.harvard.edu/ep-4-podcas…-dana-sajdi