This interdisciplinary panel examines American encounters with the Ottoman world through literary, cultural, and historical perspectives. Bringing together approaches from literary studies, history, and travel writing, the session explores how these encounters were mediated through narrative forms, institutional frameworks, and everyday practices. The panel conceptualizes encounter as an ongoing process shaped by mobility, translation, and cross-cultural negotiation. By foregrounding space, narrative, and identity formation, the panel positions the Ottoman world as a dynamic site in which American and Ottoman actors actively produced and contested forms of knowledge, representation, and belonging.

The historical evolution of scholarship on American–Ottoman relations has emphasized the development of formal and informal contacts beginning in the nineteenth century, often foregrounding trade as the primary foundation of these interactions. Charles Stelle, in his two consecutive articles “American Trade in Opium to China, Prior to 1820” (1940) and “American Trade in Opium to China, 1821–1839” (1941); Jacques Downs, in “American Merchants and the China Opium Trade, 1800–1840” (1968) and The Golden Ghetto: The American Commercial Community at Canton and the Shaping of American China Policy, 1784–1844 (1997); Üner A. Turgay, in “The 19th-Century Golden Triangle: Chinese Consumption, Ottoman Production and the American Connection, I” (1981) and “II” (1985); and Elena Frangakis-Syrett, in “Americans in the Mediterranean in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries” (2010), situate Ottoman–American relations within broader global networks, particularly through commercial expansion and maritime exchange. Scholars have also expanded this framework by examining the socio-economic and institutional dimensions of American presence in the empire, including missionary activity, education, and philanthropy. More recent studies, such as Emrah Şahin’s Faithful Encounters: Authorities and American Missionaries in the Ottoman Empire (2018), offer more integrated perspectives by analyzing interactions between missionaries and Ottoman authorities, thereby decentering earlier monolithic approaches. Moving away from institutional relations toward more personal encounters, travel narratives have also constituted an important body of sources through which Avcı and Kara, in their recent article “Cosmopolitan Encounters and Everyday Exclusions: Izmir in Early Nineteenth-Century American Travelogues” (2026), interpret these interactions, offering insight into perceptions of space, culture, and cross-cultural exchange. Despite this rich body of work, existing scholarship has largely privileged macro-level analyses centered on trade, diplomacy, and imperial institutions, leaving the everyday, spatial, and cultural dimensions of American–Ottoman encounters comparatively underexplored. This panel builds on this historiography by foregrounding literary texts, lived spaces, and cross-cultural interactions as key sites of encounter.

The papers in this session collectively trace American–Ottoman encounters across diverse genres, sites, and historical moments. The panel brings together scholars across diverse career stages and geographic locations, including both early-career and senior researchers based in the United States and Turkey. The selection of papers reflects a diversity of scholarly disciplines, including history, literary studies, and translation studies. Mert Deniz, a scholar of American cultural and diplomatic history, examines the transformation of American missionary initiatives into modern educational institutions in Constantinople. Deniz highlights how language, curriculum, and liberal education became instruments of American cultural and political influence within the empire. Sennur Bakırtas, whose research engages comparative literature and translation, analyzes Greek-Ottoman writer Demetra Vaka Brown’s Haremlik as a form of cultural translation, demonstrating how Brown’s hybrid positionality mediates Ottoman women’s lives for Anglo-American audiences while negotiating insider and outsider perspectives as an immigrant figure. Marjan Heidari, a scholar of comparative literature and postcolonial studies, examines Elif Shafak’s The Bastard of Istanbul to explore how Ottoman history persists in American diasporic consciousness. Heidari reframes encounter as an ongoing negotiation of memory, space, and identity across national borders. Together, these contributions move between the nineteenth century and its contemporary afterlives, revealing how encounters are continuously reinterpreted across time, genre, and geography.

With two presiders, Esen Kara, a literary scholar working on comparative postcolonial literature, and Ayşegül Avcı, a historian specializing in American–Ottoman history, the session models an interdisciplinary approach to American–Ottoman encounters. The presence of both presiders reflects the panel’s commitment to bridging disciplinary perspectives, bringing literary analysis and historical inquiry into dialogue. The panel, therefore, aims to contribute to broader conversations about globalizing American studies and rethinking empire beyond Eurocentric frameworks. The session will be structured to ensure balanced participation and sustained discussion: each presenter will have 15 minutes, followed by a minimum of 15 minutes reserved for unstructured discussion, audience engagement and interdisciplinary exchange.