Professor Marc David Baer

Professor Marc David Baer’s research focuses on the connected histories of Christians, Jews, and Muslims in European and Middle Eastern history, from the early modern era to the modern .

His first book, Honored by the Glory of Islam: Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe (Oxford, 2008, Turkish translation, IV. Mehmet Döneminde Osmanlı Avrupasında İhtida ve Fetih, Hil, 2010), analyzes how Muslim proselytizers conceived and practiced converting other Muslims, as well as Christians and Jews to their interpretation of Islam. Honored by the Glory of Islam was awarded the Albert Hourani Prize of the Middle East Studies Association of North America as the best book in Middle East Studies, 2008. The monograph was also short listed as the best first book in the History of Religions by the American Academy of Religion, 2009. He ends Honored by the Glory of Islam with the conversion to Islam of a group of messianic Jews in seventeenth-century Ottoman Salonika, which is the focus of his second monograph, The Dönme: Jewish Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries, and Secular Turks (Stanford, 2010, Turkish translation, Selânikli Dönmeler: Musevilikten Dönenler, Müslüman Devrimciler, ve Laik Türkler, Doğan, 2011). The Dönme is the first complete history of a secretive Ottoman community from its origins to its dissolution in twentieth-century Istanbul. The Dönme was named finalist, Sephardic Culture category at the National Jewish Book Awards, 2010.

Dr Baer's latest book is called At Meydanı’nda Ölüm: 17. Yüzyıl İstanbul'unda Toplumsal Cinsiyet, Hoşgörü ve İhtida (Death on theHippodrome: Gender, Tolerance, and Conversion in 17th century Istanbul). It was published in Turkish in Istanbul by Koç Yayınları in 2016.

In addition to these two monographs, he has written a number of academic articles, including:

• “Mistaken for Jews: Turkish PhD Students in Nazi Germany,” German Studies Review 41, no. 2, forthcoming 2017
• “Protestant Islam in Weimar Germany: Hugo Marcus and ‘The Message of the Holy Prophet Muhammad to Europe,’” New German Critique, forthcoming 2017.
• “Muslim Encounters with Nazism and the Holocaust: The Ahmadi of Berlin and Jewish Convert to Islam Hugo Marcus." The American Historical Review Vol. 120, No. 1 (February 2015): 140-171. doi: 10.1093/ahr/120.1.140​
• “History and Religious Conversion,” in The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion, ed. Lewis R. Rambo and Charles E. Farhadian (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 25-47.
• “An Enemy Old and New: The Dönme, Anti-Semitism, and Conspiracy Theories in the Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic.” Jewish Quarterly Review Vol. 103, No. 4 (Fall 2013): 523-555
• “Turk and Jew in Berlin: The First Turkish Migration to Berlin and the Shoah,” Comparative Studies in Society & History Vol. 55, No. 2 (April 2013): 330-55
• “Death in the Hippodrome: Sexual Politics and Legal Culture in the Reign of Mehmet IV,” Past & Present Vol. 210, No. 1 (February 2011): 61-91
• “Tolerance and Conversion in the Ottoman Empire: A Conversation with Marc Baer and Ussama Makdisi,” Comparative Studies in Society & History Vol. 51, No. 4 (October 2009): 927-940
• “Manliness, Male Virtue and History Writing at the Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Court,” Gender & History Vol. 20, No. 1 (April 2008): 128-148
• “Globalization, Cosmopolitanism, and the Dönme in Ottoman Salonica and Turkish Istanbul,” Journal of World History Vol. 18, No. 2 (June 2007): 141-69
• “The Double Bind of Race and Religion: The Conversion of the Dönme to Turkish Secular Nationalism,” Comparative Studies in Society & History Vol. 46, No. 4 (October 2004): 678-712
• “Islamic Conversion Narratives of Women: Social Change and Gendered Religious Hierarchy in Early Modern Ottoman Istanbul,” Gender & History Vol. 16, No. 2 (August 2004): 425-458
• "The Great Fire of 1660 and the Islamization of Christian and Jewish Space in Istanbul," International Journal of Middle East Studies Vol. 36, No. 2 (May 2004): 159-181 

Full list of publications on LSE Research Online

Professor Marc David Baer teaches the following courses:

At undergraduate level:

HY118: Faith, Power and Revolution: Europe and the Wider World, c.1500-c.1800 (jointly with other members of the Department)

HY324: Muslim-Jewish Relations: History and Memory in the Middle East and Europe, 622-1945

At postgraduate level:

HY459: The Ottoman Empire and its Legacy, 1299-1950

Professor Baer is supervising the following PhD students:

Professor Marc David Baer earned his BA degree at Northwestern University and his PhD at the University of Chicago. Before joining LSE in 2013, Baer taught at Tulane University, New Orleans, and the University of California, Irvine.

2016

2015