Dr. Catalina Hunt has been a Visiting Assistant Professor in History at Kenyon College since July 2019. A historian of the Ottoman Empire, Dr. Hunt has extensive training in Ottoman, European, Islamic, Middle Eastern, and World history. Primarily a social historian, she focuses on religious communities, identity formation, borderlands, nation-building, intellectual transnational networks, emigration movements, and the impact of war on human life. Her areas of interest and expertise are located in the Balkans and the Middle East, more specifically, Romania and Turkey. At Kenyon College, she offers courses in the history of Europe, borders and identities, and contemporary issues in world history.
Her current book project, “Changing Identities at the Fringes of the Late Ottoman Empire: The Muslims of Dobruca, 1839-1914,” examines the transition of Dobrucan Muslims from imperial subjects to nation-state citizens from the beginning of the Ottoman reform era (1839) to the advent of World War…
Read More
Dr. Catalina Hunt has been a Visiting Assistant Professor in History at Kenyon College since July 2019. A historian of the Ottoman Empire, Dr. Hunt has extensive training in Ottoman, European, Islamic, Middle Eastern, and World history. Primarily a social historian, she focuses on religious communities, identity formation, borderlands, nation-building, intellectual transnational networks, emigration movements, and the impact of war on human life. Her areas of interest and expertise are located in the Balkans and the Middle East, more specifically, Romania and Turkey. At Kenyon College, she offers courses in the history of Europe, borders and identities, and contemporary issues in world history.
Her current book project, “Changing Identities at the Fringes of the Late Ottoman Empire: The Muslims of Dobruca, 1839-1914,” examines the transition of Dobrucan Muslims from imperial subjects to nation-state citizens from the beginning of the Ottoman reform era (1839) to the advent of World War I (1914). It presents an in-depth analysis of long-term patterns of group identity formation and development in both imperial and post-imperial settings. By employing official documents, private letters, diaries, and newspaper articles written in Ottoman Turkish, modern Turkish, French, English, and Romanian, as well as a relevant secondary literature, her project constitutes an innovative way of looking at identity formation and development among religious communities living in territories that transition from empire to nation-states in Europe and the Middle East. For this project, Dr. Hunt received funding from the American Research Institute in Turkey, the U.S. Department of Education (Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad), and The Ohio State University. She presented her research in seminars, conferences or as a guest speaker at Columbia University (2019), University of Illinois-Urbana Champagne (2018), University of Sofia, Bulgaria (2017), University of Maynooth, Ireland (2016), George Washington University (2014), University of Oxford, UK (2013), Koç University, Turkey (2011), The American Research Institute in Istanbul, Turkey (2011), and the University of Bucharest, Romania (2011).
Dr. Hunt has published a book in Romanian on the status of non-Muslims living in Islamic territories during the classical age of Islam (2003), and several articles, book chapters, and book reviews in peer-reviewed publications. In the near future, she is planning to work on a comparative study focusing on how the Muslims of Europe and the Middle East experienced war and migration during the modern age.
A native of Romania, Dr. Hunt received her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in History from the University of Ovidius. In May 2015, she graduated from The Ohio State University with a Ph.D. in Ottoman/Islamic, European, and World History. Prior to coming to Kenyon, she taught courses in the Early Islamic History, Modern Middle East, Islamic World, Modern Europe, and World History at Franklin & Marshall College (2017-18), Denison University (2015-17) and The Ohio State University (2012-15).
Education
2015 — Doctor of Philosophy from The Ohio State University
Courses Recently Taught
HIST 100
Making of the Contemporary World
HIST 100
This team-taught seminar explores the 20th century in global comparative perspective, through the reading, contextualization, and analysis of mainly primary source texts and documents. In any given year the seminar will focus on one of two themes: the post-war world (ca.1945-1989), or the inter-war world (1919-1939). It takes up themes of broad political, economic and social transformations; scientific and technological innovations; and the cultural shifts that occurred throughout these decades preceding and following the Second World War. The seminar sections will meet jointly once a week for lectures or films, and separately once a week for discussion of primary-source readings. In addition to the rich historical material that the course addresses, students will begin to learn the basic skills of the historian: asking questions, finding and analyzing relevant documents or primary sources, and identifying different kinds of interpretations of those sources. This counts toward the modern requirement for the major. Open only to first-year students.
HIST 132
Modern Europe
HIST 132
The European continent is incredibly diverse: geographically, culturally, economically, ethnically and politically (to name only the most obvious factors). Throughout the semester we will explore this diversity of experiences since the end of the 18th century. We will look at issues of race, class and gender, as well as violence, poverty, faith, nationalism, technology and art. We will read novels and memoirs, watch films and listen to music as we hone our historical knowledge and sensibilities regarding modern Europe, its peoples and its governments. We will examine the fates of a variety of nations, using examples from across the continent. This counts toward the modern requirement for the major and minor.
HIST 391
ST: Borders and Identities
HIST 391