History of Now Lectures Series - On Sultans, Prophets and the Early Modern Amalek: History of Jews in Arab Ottoman Provinces, 1517-1882

About this event

History at MIT invites you to join us on Thursday, November 12th at 5 pm in E51-095 for the second lecture in the History of Now series, featuring Orit Bashkin, the Mabel Greene Myers Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History and Director of Graduate Studies, Modern Fields at the University of Chicago. Her first talk is titled " On Sultans, Prophets and the Early Modern Amalek: History of Jews in Arab Ottoman Provinces, 1517-1882 ."

Orit Bashkin

Mabel Greene Myers Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History

Director of Graduate Studies, Modern Fields

University of Chicago

Thursday, November 12, 2026

5-6:30 pm

MIT Building E51, Room 095

Public Lectures Dates

November 12

On Sultans, Prophets and the Early Modern Amalek: History of Jews in Arab Ottoman Provinces, 1517-1882

November 16

Reluctant Neighbors: History of Jews in Palestine and the Levant, 1700-1850

November 19

A Different Critique: MENA Jewish Approaches to Zionism and Imperialism, 1830-1948

About Orit Bashkin

Orit Bashkin is a historian who works on the intellectual, social, and cultural history of the modern Middle East. She got her Ph.D. from Princeton University (2004), writing a thesis on Iraqi intellectual history under the supervision of Professors Robert Tignor and Samah Selim, and her BA (1995) and MA (1999) from Tel Aviv University. Since her graduation, she has been working as a professor of modern Middle Eastern history in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. Her publications deal with Iraqi history, the history of Iraqi Jews, the Arab cultural revival movement (the nahda) in the late 19th century, and the connections between modern Arab history and Arabic literature. Her current research project explores the lives of Iraqi Jews in Israel.

To Attend

All of these lectures are free and open to the public. More information on the lecture series is available here .

For questions, please contact Professor Lerna Ekmekcioglu, Head of History at MIT, at lerna@mit.edu .

We hope to see you there!