Amy Singer is an American historian. She is a Professor of Ottoman and Islamic History at

Brandeis University Brandeis University () is a Private university, private research university in Waltham, Massachusetts, United States. It is located within the Greater Boston area. Founded in 1948 as a nonsectarian, non-sectarian, coeducational university, Bra ...

. Her major research areas are agrarian relations, philanthropy, and the city of

Edirne Edirne (; ), historically known as Orestias, Adrianople, is a city in Turkey, in the northwestern part of the Edirne Province, province of Edirne in Eastern Thrace. Situated from the Greek and from the Bulgarian borders, Edirne was the second c ...

Education

Singer earned her BA at

Swarthmore College Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the e ...

(1982). She completed a PhD in Near Eastern Studies at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

in 1989.

Career

In 1989, she was appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at

Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) is a Public university, public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Located in northwest Tel Aviv, the university is the center of teaching and ...

. In 2007 she was promoted to professor. Singer served as head of the Women's Studies Forum at

. In 2018 she was appointed to the department of history and the Sylvia K. Hassenfeld Chair in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at

. She has held a number of research grants and fellowships including from the

Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, based in Jerusalem, was established in 1961 by the State of Israel to foster contact between Israeli scholars in the sciences and humanities and create a think tank for advising the government on res ...

, the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry located in Princeton, New Jersey. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholars, including Albert Ein ...

(Princeton) (2014–15), and a visiting fellowship at

All Souls College All Souls College (official name: The College of All Souls of the Faithful Departed, of Oxford) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Unique to All Souls, all of its members automatically become fellows (i.e., full me ...

, Oxford (2018–19). Singer has also held visiting professorships at the Bosphorus University (2011) and

Bologna University The University of Bologna (, abbreviated Unibo) is a public research university in Bologna, Italy. Teaching began around 1088, with the university becoming organised as guilds of students () by the late 12th century. It is the oldest university ...

(2010). Singer is on the editorial board of '' Mediterranean Historical Review'', the ''Journal on Muslim Philanthropy and Civil Society'' and ''Turcica'' and is president of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association. She established OpenOttoman, a digital platform for Ottoman studies.

Awards and recognition

In 2010 she received the ARNOVA ( Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action) Book Prize for the Outstanding Book in Nonprofit and Voluntary Action Research, for ''Charity in Islamic Societies''. In 2008 she received the Sakıp Sabancı International Research Award 2008, First Prize, for the article: “The Persistence of Philanthropy”. She is the daughter of

molecular biologist Molecular biology is a branch of biology that seeks to understand the molecule, molecular basis of biological activity in and between Cell (biology), cells, including biomolecule, biomolecular synthesis, modification, mechanisms, and interactio ...

and science administrator Maxine Singer and the sister of mathematician and politician Stephanie Singer.

Selected publications

Books

*A. Singer.1994. ''Palestinian Peasants and Ottoman Officials: Rural Administration around Sixteenth-century Jerusalem''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Turkish translation: ''Kadılar, Kullar, Kudüslü Köylüler''. İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1996. Turkish translation republished: ''Kadılar, Kullar, Kudüslü Köylüler''. Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2008. *A. Singer 2002. ''Constructing Ottoman Beneficence: An Imperial Soup Kitchen in Jerusalem''. Albany: State University of New York Press. Turkish translation: ''Osmanlı'da Hayirseverlik: Kudüs’te bir Haseki Sultan İmareti.'' İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 2004 *A. Singer. 2008. ''Charity in Islamic Societies''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Turkish translation: ''İyilik Yap, Denize At: Musulman Toplumlarda Hayırseverlik'' (Istanbul: Kitap Yayınevi, 2012).

Edited volumes

* A. Singer with Michael Bonner and Mine Ener, eds. 2003. ''Poverty and Charity in Middle Eastern Contexts''. Albany: State University of New York Press. * A. Singer with Nina Ergin and Christoph K. Neumann, eds. 2007. ''Feeding People, Feeding Power: Imarets in the Ottoman Empire''. Istanbul: Eren Yayıncılık. * A. Singer. 2011. ''Starting with Food: Culinary Approaches to Ottoman History''. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers. Published simultaneously under the same title as a special issue of ''Princeton Papers. Interdisciplinary Journal of Middle Eastern Studies'' 16 (2011). Turkish translation: ''Haydi Sofraya!'' ''Mutfak Penceresinden Osmanlı Tarihi''. Istanbul: Kitap Yayınevi, 2015.

Articles

*A. Singer 2005. Serving up charity: The Ottoman public kitchen. ''Journal of Interdisciplinary History'' 35.3: 481-500. *A. Singer 2006. Soup and sadaqa: Charity in Islamic societies. ''Historical Research'' 79.205: 306-324. *A. Singer 2011. The Persistence of Philanthropy. ''

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East ''Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East'' is a triannual peer-reviewed academic journal covering Comparative Studies on Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. It provides a "critical and comparative analyses of the hist ...

'', 31:3: 557-568. *A. Singer 2016. Making Jerusalem Ottoman. In ''Living in the Ottoman Realm: Sultans, Subjects and Elites'', eds. Christine Isom-Verhaaren and Kent F. Schull. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, pp. 123–136. *A. Singer 2016. Enter, Riding on an Elephant: One Approach to Early Ottoman Edirne. ''Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association'', 3:1: 89 -109. *A. Singer, 2016. Introducing the Ottoman Gazetteer and OpenOttoman. ''Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association'' 3(2): 407-412.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Singer, Amy Living people 20th-century American historians 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American historians 21st-century American women writers Historians of the Middle East Scholars of Ottoman history Year of birth missing (living people)