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Cemil Aydin

Professor
465 Hamilton Hall
caydin@email.unc.edu
Curriculum Vitae

Education

BA Bogazici University, Istanbul, 1991
MA Istanbul University, 1995
PhD Harvard University, 2002

Research Interests

Cemil Aydin’s interests focus on both Modern Middle Eastern History and Modern Asian history, with an emphasis on the international and intellectual histories of the Ottoman and Japanese Empires. He is particularly interested in historical processes that shape transnational racial and civilizational identities, such as Muslim, Asian, African. His research and publications offer new ways to understand the historical roots of the contemporary world order by describing the process of imperial era conflicts and decolonization, especially from the perspective of non-Western actors of the Muslim world and East Asia. Other research and teaching interests deal with questions of internationalism and orientalism, and modern world history.

Some Notable Publications

  • Cemil Aydin, The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History (Harvard University Press, March 2017) –Italian translation:, L'idea di mondo musulmano. Una storia intellettuale globale (Einaudi Publishers, 2018)
  • Cemil Aydin and Juliane Hammer, “Muslims and Media: Perceptions, Participation, and Change” (special issue), Contemporary Islam (10 December 2009)
  • Cemil Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, Global and International History Series, 2007)
  • Cemil Aydin and Juliane Hammer, “Critiques of the ‘West’ in Turkey, Iran and Japan: Occidentalism, the Crisis of Global Modernity and the Politics of Nationalism,” special issue of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 26:3 (Fall 2006). (Editor’s Introduction: 347-352)

    • Graduate Students

    Courses Taught (as schedule allows)

    For current information about course offerings, click here.

    • HIST 394—International and Global History
    • HIST 460—Empires, Nations and Revolutions, 1750–1919

    554A Pauli Murray Hall*
    102 Emerson Dr., CB #3195
    Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3195

    *Though the History Department uses the name Pauli Murray Hall for our building, on official maps you will find it as Hamilton Hall. Joseph Grégoire de Roulhac Hamilton’s intellectually dishonest historical and archival work promoted white supremacy. In contrast, Pauli Murray marshaled unassailable evidence and analysis in the service of racial and gender equality. In July 2020, all of the departments housed in the building agreed to adopt the name Pauli Murray Hall in place of Hamilton Hall. An official request with the Chancellor is pending. For more information, please see here.
    phone: 919.962.2115
    fax: 919.962.1403
    email: history@unc.edu
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