Dr. Oscar Aguirre Mandujano

Biography

Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano is a historian specializing in early modern Ottoman history and intellectual history. His research focuses on the intellectual and cultural connections within the Ottoman world, examining literature, poetry, and bureaucracy. Currently, he is working on a book project titled 'Sea Gossip: Truth and Imagination in the Early Modern Mediterranean,' which explores how informal exchanges of information, such as gossip and anecdote, shaped perceptions of the early modern Mediterranean. This project investigates the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, utilizing sources ranging from biographical dictionaries to diplomatic correspondence and literary works. Aguirre-Mandujano's work aims to reveal the dynamics of intellectual production and communication in the early modern Mediterranean, particularly in relation to the Ottoman realms and their socio-political contexts. His monograph 'Occasions of Poetry: Politics, Literature, and Imagination in Early Modern Ottomans' is set to be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2025. Aguirre-Mandujano completed his Ph.D. at the University of Washington and has degrees from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He also co-organizes the Baki Project, a Digital Humanities initiative focused on Ottoman manuscripts, and has contributed to scholarly volumes on the Ottoman Jewish past.

Research Interests

Courses