Leslie P. Peirce

Leslie Peirce's writing and teaching focus on the Ottoman empire, with an emphasis on the early modern period. One thread that runs through her work is the ways in which women and men participate and interact in various contexts. Her first book explored the shifting nature of imperial politics by placing the palace harem at the center of inquiry. Likewise her second book, which examines aspects of law and society in a provincial court by exploring women, utilization of the court (or avoidance of and inability to approach it) and what that can tell us about community as well as imperial dynamics. Other topics Peirce has written about include honor and sexuality, provincial politics, abduction and captivity, and slavery and household formation. She is currently writing a biography of Hurrem  the concubine and then wife to Suleyman I the magnificent.

Princeton University, PhD 1988

Ottoman empire, pre-modern Middle East & Southeastern Europe, gender and women’s history, law and society 

Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations Fellowship 2009/10; Guggenheim Fellowship 2009/10; Professeur Invité, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales 2005; Senior Fellow, Townsend Center for the Humanities, UC Berkeley 2004/5; Institute for Advanced Studies NEH Fellowship 2002/3; Research Fellow, Harvard Divinity School 1995/6; SSRC Fellowship 1992/3; Fulbright Fellowship 1992/3, 1984/5; NEH Translation Grant 1991; American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship 1990; American Philosophical Society Fellowship 1990.

Morality Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab, University of California

Winner: Albert Hourani Prize for best book, Middle East Studies Association       

Winner:  M.F. Köprülü Prize for best book (biannual), Turkish Studies Association  

The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire

Winner: M.F. Köprülü Prize for best book  (biannual), Turkish Studies Association 

“Becoming Ottoman in 16^th-century Aintab”,  Living in the Ottoman Realm: Everyday Life and Identity,  eds. C.  Isom-Verhaaren & K. Schull, Indiana University Press (2016), 108-122.       

 “Suleyman in Aleppo,” Turkish Language, Literature, and History: Travellers' Tales, Sultans, and Scholars since the Eighth Century, eds. G. Leiser & B. Hickman, Routledge (2015), 308-322.

“Passages Interdits: Structures du désir dans le monde Ottoman au XVIe siècle”, in

J. Dakhlia, A. Farge, C. Klapisch-Zuber, A. Stella, eds., Histoires de l’amour: Fragilités et interdits, du Kamasutra à nos jours (Bayard, 2011), 161-182.

“Abduction with (dis)honor: Sovereigns, bandits, and heroes in the Ottoman world”, Journal

 of Early Modern History 15 (2011,: 311-329.  Special issue on honor and the state.

“Domesticating sexuality: Harem culture in Ottoman imperial law”, in Marilyn Booth, ed., Harem Histories: Lived Spaces and Imagined Places (Duke Univ. Press, 2010), 104-135.

“Polyglottism in the Ottoman Empire: A Reconsideration”, in G. Piterberg, T. Ruiz, & G.

Symcox, eds., Braudel Revisited: The Mediterranean World, 1600-1800 (University of

Toronto Press, 2010), 76-98.

“Writing Histories of Sexuality in the Middle East”, American Historical Review, Forum on

Historiographies of Sexuality, 114 (December 2009), 1325-1339.

“An Imperial Caste: Inverted Racialization in the Architecture of Ottoman Sovereignty”, in M. R. Greer, W. Mignolo, & M.Quilligan, eds., Rereading the Black Legend: The Discourses of

Racism  in the Renaissance Empires (Univ. Chicago Press, 2007), 27-47.