Historical Scholarship of the Modern Middle East, Late Ottoman Empire
Topic: Early modern history and historiography

Kafadar, Cemal. “Ottomans and Europe.” In Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Heiko A. Oberman, James D. Tracy, eds., Handbook in European History, 1400-1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation. Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1996: 589-628.
Summary: Kafadar provides an overview of Ottoman history from 1400 to 1600 and suggests that the oft-cited European-Ottoman, East-West dichotomy is not accurate for this time period, as they shared many institutions and social and cultural patterns as early modern societies.

Tezcan, Baki. The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Summary: Tezcan argues that the characterization of the 16th century Ottoman empire as an empire in decline is inaccurate; rather, it was a prime example of an early modern polity, one characterized by shifting socioeconomic conditions defined by the monetization of the economy.

Historical Studies of Women and Gender
Topic: State-building, religion and gender: early modern Germany

Pateman, Carole. “The Fraternal Social Contract.” In The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism, and Political Theory. Stanford:  Stanford University Press, 1990: 33-57.
Summary: Pateman challenges the notion that liberalism is inherently inclusive of all individuals within a society by examining the works of contract theorists, their critics, and others who discussed contract theory through a feminist lens. In order to counter the patriarchy inherent to the fraternal social contract, the understanding of the body politic must be dismantled so that definitions of citizenship are not based on the patriarchal separation of private and public, but rather on individuality and sexual identities as feminine and masculine beings.

Pateman, Carole. “Feminist Critiques of the Public/Private Dichotomy.” In The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism, and Political Theory. Stanford:  Stanford University Press, 1990: 118-40.
Summary: In this chapter, Pateman argues that in order to rid ourselves of the patriarchy inherent to the public/private dichotomy of liberalism, a social theory must be developed that acknowledges the mutually constitutive relationship of the public and the private.

Strasser,Ulrike. State of Virginity: Gender, Religion, and Politics in an Early Modern Catholic State. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004.
Summary: In this work, Ulrike examines the early modern Bavarian capital of Munich to reveal the importance of gendered narratives of religion and politics in state power and the creation of a centralized political state through the policing of women’s sexualized and classed bodies.

Strasser, Ulrike, and Heidi Tinsman. “Engendering World History.” Radical History Review 91 (Winter 2005): 151-164.
Summary: An interesting pedagogical piece about a world history survey course the author co-taught in which they used gender as their centralizing theme.