Near and Middle Eastern Studies


December 7, 2020

Student profile: Canan Bolel – Epidemics and the Politics of Pestilence in Ottoman Izmir and in the Present

Canan Bolel, a PhD candidate in the University of Washington’s NMES program, is finishing up her dissertation focusing on the experiences of the Jewish population in mid to late 19th century Ottoman Izmir. When she set out to conduct archival research into the city’s historical cholera epidemics though, she little realized how far 2020’s events…