Introduction

Welcome to JOTSA’s Spring 2019 issue! This volume features a themed issue entitled “Ceremonies, Festivals, and Rituals in the Ottoman World” (guest editors: Ozgen Felek and Sinem Erdoğan İşkorkutan), which includes seven articles and a short introduction. The themed issue represents the fruits of a conference organized by the guest editors in 2017 at Yale University entitled “Recent Perspectives of Ceremonies, Rituals, and Festivals in the Ottoman World.” An exciting area of research, studies on ceremonies, festivals, and rituals in Ottoman history continue to expand and attract a growing number of scholars. Articles in this themed issue draw attention to new sources, methodologies, and questions, while calling for larger comparative perspectives. In this issue of JOTSA, readers will also find articles by Aydoğan Kars and Ayşe Ozil, along with three book reviews and a workshop report by Matthew Ghazarian.

In our effort to cover all relevant publications in our growing field of Ottoman and Turkish studies, we have added new book review editors. We would like to welcome our new book review editors: Senem Aslan (Bates College), Ayşecan Terzioğlu (Sabancı University), Ahmet Tunç Şen (Columbia University), and Nilay Özok-Gündoğan (Florida State University). We thank Metin Atmaca (Ankara Sosyal Bilimler University) and Murat Yaşar (SUNY-Oswego) for their continued service.

JOTSA would like to express its appreciation to Indiana University Press and its staff for publishing and distributing the journal. JOTSA continues to be available online and in print. Plus all issues of the Turkish Studies Association Journal (TSAJ), the Turkish Studies Association Bulletin (TSAB), and the Turkish Studies Association Newsletter are available on JSTOR. Additionally, we thank all the anonymous reviewers who have so willingly given of their time to peer-review this issue’s articles. We understand that this is a sacrifice of precious time and sincerely appreciate their efforts in making this a high quality journal. We would like to thank our consulting editor Kent Schull (Binghamton University, SUNY) for his dedicated support and our Graduate Assistant Editor, Sibel Karakoç (Binghamton University, SUNY). JOTSA’s editors and editorial board wish to thank the Institute of Turkish Studies (ITS) for its continued support of the journal in providing publication subvention funds, Rutgers University-Newark for its generous support, and Binghamton University, SUNY for its continued support with office space and a graduate assistantship. Guest editors would like to thank the generous support provided by The Barakat Trust.

The Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association (JOTSA) is committed to maintaining the highest standards in publication ethics and academic professionalism. We publish new research, as well as book reviews (commissioned only), conference reports, notes, and announcements. All article-length submissions are evaluated for publication by means of a rigorous, double-blind peer-review process. JOTSA supports ethical research practices, including confidentiality, consent, and other field-specific research requirements, and is committed to transparency, diversity, and academic integrity. Our publication guidelines conform to those of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (http://publicationethics.org); see the COPE Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers.

Please note that the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association has moved to a new website: http://www.ottomanturkishstudiesassociation.org/. We encourage all readers to visit the website and join OTSA or renew their membership.