Past Plagues: Why the Ottoman Experience Matters

The COVID-19 pandemic is a historic event that will transform society both profoundly and irreversibly. With a conviction that the past helps us understand the present and the present should help us rethink the past, Nükhet Varlik, an associate professor of history at Rutgers University–Newark, will discuss the Ottoman Empire’s experience with plagues and how they shape the way we think about modern pandemics.

Varlık is the author of Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World: The Ottoman Experience, 1347-1600 (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and editor of Plague and Contagion in the Islamic Mediterranean (Arc Humanities Press, 2017).

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