Maryam Patton (USA)

Life After Ertegun House

I am now working on my PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. My dissertation topic concerns questions of time and temporality in the early modern period. Without the reliable, standardized measures that we ‘moderns’ rely on to organize our day, how did people in the early modern period experience and think about time? I focus especially on the links between the Italian city states and Istanbul in order to deepen our understanding of a shared Mediterranean temporal culture. I also question the assumption that Christian and Muslim communities might have experienced distinct modes of time organized around their respective religious institutions.