Daniel Stolz is the Kemal H. Karpat Associate Professor in the Department of History. He researches and teaches the history of the late Ottoman Empire and the emergence of the modern Middle East in the 19th and 20th centuries. He is especially interested in how Ottomans used new kinds of technical knowledge to transform their society in the decades before World War I. In his first book, The Lighthouse and the Observatory: Islam, Science, and Empire in Late Ottoman Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Professor Stolz showed how new astronomical practices enabled the growth of the modern Egyptian state and of Islamic movements that emphasized uniform and precise observance of ritual duties. He is currently conducting research for his second book, The Long Debt: The Ottoman Loans and Economic Governance in the Twentieth Century.
A word from Dean Eric M. Wilcots:
As a scholar of modern Ottoman history, the history of science and the history of capitalism, Professor Stolz works in challenging fields that require expertise in multiple languages and diverse thought worlds. He has effectively communicated and explored the big questions that animate his research.