History Department Faculty
Dana Sajdi
Associate Professor, Director of Graduate Studies
Dana Sajdi
Ph.D.
Contact
Stokes Hall Room S307
Telephone: 617-552-1871
Email: dana.sajdi@bc.edu
ORCID 0000-0003-1414-4294
Education
- B.A., American University in Cairo
- Ph.D., Columbia University
Research Interests
Islamic history; Arabic and Ottoman historiography; urban history; popular history; book history; topography; Geographic Information Systems
Department
Biography
Dana Sajdi is a specialist in the premodern social and cultural history of the Arabic-speaking Eastern Mediterranean. She is currently writing In Defense of Damascus, a history of the city that is based on a continuous tradition of local descriptions between the 12th and 20th centuries.
In addition to keeping a busy research agenda, Sajdi has been involved in podcasting as a teaching and learning medium. Along with colleagues and students, she set up a Pod Studio at the History Department and has been teaching a history core course entitled Podcasting the Ottomans (HIST 1806) for which undergraduates have the opportunity to publish their research: Navigating the Book of Navigation and Stories Ottoman Objects Tell. The course has been featured on the Ottoman History Podcast.
Selected Publications and Podcast Appearances
2022: “From Diyārāt to Ziyārāt: Transmutations of the Sacred and Generic Landscape in Syria,” Journal of Arabic Literature 53 (2022): 216-245.
2022: “Piri with Peers,” Navigating the Book of Navigation, Podcasting the Ottomans, September 4.
2021: Response to François Hartog, “Chronos, Kairos, Krisis: The Genesis of Western Time,” History and Theory 60.3 (2021): 444-448.
2021: “Taking Shape: Arab Abstraction, 1950’s-1980’s” Art in Focus, Co-Commentator with Sahar Bazzaz on an exhibition at the McMullen Museum, Boston College, May 4
2021: “Podcasting and the Islamic History Classroom,” with Chris Gratien, hosted by Meryum Kazmi and Harry Bastermajian, Harvard Islamica.
2020: “The Place of Early-Modern Arabic Culture,” The Journal of Turkish and Ottoman Studies Association 7.2 (2020): 81-94.
2019: “Reclaiming Damascus: Rescripting Islamic Time and Space in the 16th century,” History and Theory, Special Issue Islamic Pasts: Histories, Concepts, Interventions, edited by Shahzad Bashir) 58.4 (2019): 68-85
2016: “Nouveau Literacy in the 18th-Century Levant,” Ottoman History Podcast, November 12.
2013: The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the 18th-Century Ottoman Levant. Stanford University Press. 2013 (Arabic and Turkish translations in 2018).
2009: “Re-visiting Laylā’s al-Akhyaliyya’s Trespass,” in Early Islamic Poetry and Poetics, the Formation of the Classical Islamic World Series, edited by Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych. Ashgate/Variorum, 2009, 157-200. Reprint.
2009: “Print and its Discontents: A Case for Pre-Print Journalism and Other Sundry Print Matters,” The Translator, 15:1, 2009, 105-138.
2008: “‘Decline’ and its Discontents and Ottoman Cultural History: By Way of Introduction,” in Ottoman Tulips, Ottoman Coffee: Leisure and Lifestyles in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Dana Sajdi. IB Tauris, 2008, 1-40.