Incorporating the Ottoman empire into American studies : a comparative historiography of medicine, missionaries, and sexuality.

Abstract

This project traces the methodological and subject concerns of three different academic literatures and identifies gaps in current research in order to bring the nineteenth and early twentieth century Ottoman Empire into contact with American Studies. This project examines secondary literature on the history of American medicine in the nineteenth century, the history of Ottoman medicine in the nineteenth century, and the history of American missionaries in Greater Syria. It makes recommendations based on the review of these three literatures about how to proceed with a project that examines primary sources of American missionaries and those they influenced to trace gender and sexual norms they may have imported along with the medical education they provided.