Art historian Özlem Gülin Dağoğlu first connected with the Cornell Fine Arts Museum in 2011 after inquiring into the painting Portrait of Thomas Edison, the Thinker by Mihri Rasim. The painting was gifted to Hamilton Holt and Rollins College in 1932. Fast forward to 2018, and with the assistance of Darla Moore Archival Specialist at the Olin Library, Dağoğlu saw the work in person this past summer. We are hopeful that the work will make an appearance next year in the first retrospective exhibition devoted to the artist at SALT Galata in Istanbul.  

Listen as Özlem Gülin Dağoğlu discusses art, gender, and migration in a period of momentous political change with Dr. Sam Dolbee and Shireen Hamza in the Ottoman History Podcast: Mihri Rasim Between Empire and Nation | Özlem Gülin Dağoğlu.

Özlem Gülin Dağoğlu’s research explores the art and politics of the Late Ottoman Empire and early Republican Turkey with a focus on cross-cultural exchanges, modernism and globalization, nationalism and gender, and Orientalist photography in the United States. In 2017, she obtained her Ph.D. on Mihri Rasim, Turkey’s iconic woman artist and a deeply committed feminist. She is currently working on her monograph, provisionally entitled Mihri Rasim (1885-1954): Istanbul – Paris – New York, the Global Network of an Ambitious Young Turk Painter. In addition, she is co-organizing the first retrospective exhibition devoted to the artist at SALT Galata in Istanbul, which will be held from March 7 to June 9, 2019.

Sam Dolbee completed his Ph.D. in 2017 at New York University. His book project is an environmental history of the Jazira region in the late Ottoman period and its aftermath.

Shireen Hamza is a doctoral student in the History of Science department at Harvard University. Her research focuses broadly on the history of science and medicine in the Islamicate Middle Ages, especially in the Indian Ocean World.