Historical and Cultural Studies (UTSC), Graduate Department of History, Program in Book History and Print Culture, University of Toronto
E. Natalie Rothman is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Toronto and Chair of the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies at UTSC. She is interested in the history of Venetian-Ottoman cultural mediation in the early modern period, diplomatic translation and translators, the genealogies of Orientalism, the history of archives, and digital scholarship. She is the author of Brokering Empire: Trans-Imperial Subjects between Venice and Istanbul (Cornell University Press, 2011) and the forthcoming book and digital project, The Dragoman Renaissance: Diplomatic Interpreters and the Routes of Orientalism.
Research related to commentary
Rothman’s current project, “Trans-Imperial Archives: Diplomacy, Circulation, and Entanglement in the Early Modern Mediterranean,” is a SSHRC-funded collaboration with Kirsta Stapelfeldt (UTSC library), Guy Burak (NYU), Heather Ferguson (Claremont McKenna College) and Fiorella Foscarini (iSchool), exploring the trans-imperial roots of one of the most canonical archives of diplomacy, that of the Venetian bailate, or permanent embassy in the Ottoman Empire. The project aims to foreground the entangled, trans-imperial production of diplomatic knowledge by analyzing the mobilities of documentary practices and practitioners, genres, and text artifacts across sovereign boundaries and linguistic codes that constituted the bailate archives over their formative period, from 1570 to 1715.
Publications related to commentary
“Accounting for Gifts: The Poetics and Pragmatics of Material Circulations in Venetian-Ottoman Diplomacy.” In Cultures of Empire: Rethinking Venetian Rule, 1400–1700. Essays in Honour of Benjamin Arbel. Eds. Georg Christ and Franz-Julius Morche. Leiden: Brill, 2020, pp. 414-454. DOI: 10.1163/9789004428874_017
“Dragomans and ‘Turkish Literature’: The Making of a Field of Inquiry.” In Minorities, Intermediaries and Middlemen in the Ottoman Empire. Ed. Nicola Melis. Special issue of Oriente Moderno 93, 2 (2013): 390-421.
“Visualizing a Space of Encounter: Intimacy, Alterity, and Trans-Imperial Perspective in an Ottoman-Venetian Miniature Album.” Other Places: Ottomans Traveling, Seeing, Writing, Drawing the World. Essays in Honor of Thomas D. Goodrich, Part II. Eds. Baki Tezcan and Gottfried Hagen. Special issue of Osmanlı Araştırmaları / Journal of Ottoman Studies 40 (2012): 39-80.
“Afterword.” Things not easily believed: Introducing the Early Modern Relation. Eds. Thomas V. Cohen and Germaine Warkentin. Special issue of Renaissance and Reformation/ Renaissance et Réforme, 34, 1-2: 237-243.
“Genealogies of Mediation: ‘Culture Broker’ and Imperial Governmentality.” In Anthrohistory: Unsettling Knowledge, Questioning Discipline. Eds. Edward Murphy, David W. Cohen and others. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010, pp. 67-79.
Other publications
The Dragoman Renaissance: Diplomatic Interpreters and the Routes of Orientalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021.
Brokering Empire: Trans-Imperial Subjects between Venice and Istanbul. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011.
The Politics of Boycotts. Radical History Review 134 (May 2019). (co-edited with Andrew Zimmerman)
“Afterword: Intermediaries, Mediation, and Cross-Confessional Diplomacy in the Early Modern Mediterranean.” Cross-Confessional Diplomacy and Diplomatic Intermediaries in the Early Modern Mediterranean World. Eds. Tijana Krstic and Maartje van Gelder. Special issue of Journal of Early Modern History 19, 2-3 (2015): 245-259.
“Interpreting Dragomans: Boundaries and Crossings in the Early Modern Mediterranean.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 51, 4 (October 2009): 771-800.