Ethan Menchinger

I am lecturer in the History of the Islamic World, with special interests in the Ottoman Empire, pre-modern Islamic history, and intellectual and cultural production. My research to date has explored various aspects of theology, philosophy, historical writing, and historical and political thought in the Ottoman Empire, focusing on the early modern period (ca. 1600-1800). I am especially keen to explore how ideas, concepts, and frameworks evolved in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, at the cusp of the modern era. 

I grew up in the American midwest. Before arriving in Manchester in September 2018, I studied at the University of Toronto (BA, 2007) and the University of Michigan (MA, 2010; PhD, 2014). I then held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Forum Transregionale Studien and Freie Universität in Berlin (2014/15), spent a year as visiting scholar at the University of Toronto (2015/16), and served as Lecturer in Early Ottoman History at the University of Michigan (2017). 

My research has appeared in venues like the Journal of the History of Ideas, the Journal of Ottoman Studies, and the Wiley-Blackwell History of Islam, with forthcoming articles in the Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies and Journal of Islamic Studies. I have also published two books, a monograph with Cambridge University Press (2017) and an edited text and translation with Isis Press, Istanbul (2011).

As of July 2018, I am also part of the cooperative ERC-funded project GHOST (Geographies and Histories of the Ottoman Supernatural Tradition). Led by Dr. Marinos Sariyannis (Rethymno, Greece), our research team includes scholars across Europe and North America and seeks to explore notions of the strange, the marvelous, and the supernatural within the Ottoman Empire between ca. 1500 to 1800. 

Courses Taught, 2018-19

Undergraduate

Level 1: HIST10101, History in Practice (Ottoman Encounters in Early Modern Europe)

Level 2: HIST20181, The Making of the Modern Mind

Level 3: HIST31871, Culture in Ottoman Society, 1300-1800

Postgraduate

Historical Research 1 & 2

War, Culture, and Conflict

The Boundaries of the Political: Conceptual Innovation and Political Change