Introduction

Welcome to the website for the 2015 Summer Institute in Istanbul which will be held from July 5 to 25, 2015.   This Institute is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.   In Summer 2013, UC San Diego Prof. Matthew Herbst led the first “Istanbul Between East and West: Crossroads of Culture” Institute.    As in 2013, the 2015 Summer Institute will bring 25 middle and high school social studies, arts, geography, and humanities teachers to Istanbul for a three-week intensive program where they will learn from leading scholars on Roman, Byzantine, Medieval Mediterranean, Ottoman, and modern Turkish history.   The 2015 Institute faculty team is drawn from University of California San Diego, University of California Riverside, Ohio State University, University of Michigan, Arizona State University, and from Boğazici and Özyeğin Universities in Turkey.   As in 2013, this team is comprised of distinguished scholars and recognized leaders in their respective periods of historical study.   Equally important, these scholars are also outstanding and passionate teachers.

This Summer Institute provides teachers with a better understanding of a city and region that has been at the crossroads of regional and world history from antiquity to the present.   The Institute used Istanbul as an intellectual point of departure to explore the Roman/Byzantine and Ottoman Empires and modern Turkey. With its emphasis on cross-cultural encounters and global comparisons, the program situated this history in the larger context of the Mediterranean and Middle East and in the even broader framework of world history. The Institute integrated readings, lectures, and discussions with the most important text, Istanbul itself, making its monuments, museums, and urban geography part of the academic design.   Participants generated ways to incorporate the Institute content, which corresponded to the National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies, into their classroom instruction.