Columbia Students to Study and Experience Istanbul’s History, Monuments and Urban Life through the Columbia-Bogaziçi Summer School in Byzantine and Ottoman Studies

June 23, 2014

June 23 – August 13

Columbia University and Bogaziçi University are offering a joint summer program for a select group of advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students which provides a unique opportunity to learn about the history, urban development, and historic monuments of the city of Byzantion–Constantinople–Istanbul through coursework and site visits that allow them to explore and understand Istanbul’s modern topography as an exciting palimpsest of empires, cultures, and religions first hand. A research and fieldwork component adds practical experience in architectural site survey and documentation, still and panoramic photography, archival work, and issues of architectural conservation.

A total of eight students from Columbia will join their counterparts from Boğaziçi University, in what will be the second year that this course is being held. The course is part of a larger project, the Istanbul Documentation Project, led by Professor Holger A. Klein, Chair of Columbia University’s Department of Art History and Archaeology in collaboration with the Media Center for Art History. The project is creating a digital platform for the virtual presentation of Istanbul’s Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and early Republican sites and monuments and thus provides a rich resource for scholars, students, and the general public to study the deep history of the city. The Istanbul Research Institute, the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul as well as a number of other leading research institutes are partners in this initiative.

This year’s summer school consists of three courses:

  1. “Byzantion – Constantinople – Istanbul: A City and its Monuments” taught by Prof. Holger Klein of Columbia University’s Department of Art History and Archaeology;
  2.  “Architecture of the Sultans: Form, Function, and Ideology in the Imperial Mosques of Istanbul” taught by Dr. Ünver Rüstem, Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in Columbia’s Department of Art History and Archaeology; and,
  3. “Introduction to Byzantine History” taught by Asst. Prof. Koray Durak of Boğaziçi’s Department of History.

Columbia Global Centers | Turkey is delighted to welcome the students and professors to Istanbul!