Biography

Zeynep Tezer is a historian of the early-modern Ottoman Empire working on the intersection of social and cultural history. She earned her PhD from the University of Chicago in 2023. Her dissertation project, entitled ‘The Poet Smiles to the Fool: Critical Discourse and Marginalization in the Ottoman Empire, ca. 1550ca. 1650,’ investigates the reappropriation of the Ottoman regime and institutions through the criticisms and subversive actions of the socially disadvantaged groups and individuals. At the EUI, she will work on transforming her dissertation into a book manuscript. She will continue to build on her research interests, including the connection between literary form and subversive dissent in the Ottoman Empire, the role of humour in social and political arguments, and the processes of social marginalization.