It’s been over a year - sixteen months, in fact - since I last turned to Substack. A variety of reasons for the absence, many of which revolved around trying to finish this:
And it’s done! As a long-time reader of books but a first-time author, it’s pretty neat to hold a book in your hands and think, Oh, this is the product of my labor and thought. (But not just mine! The press was wonderful to work with, and I’m especially grateful to the copy editor who worked through the book with such care and to my friend Kate Elizabeth Creasey who helped me to index the book.) At the same time, there’s also something odd about the experience of realizing that the book exists as an object that might move through the world in unexpected ways that are entirely separate from my relationship to it.
So what I’d like to do over the next few months is reflect on the process of writing the book as a way of encouraging other people to read it. I have a tentative list of what I’d like to cover:
How did I come to the book project?
This project started as a dissertation - how did it become a book?
What’s interesting about its methodological approach?
The challenges and opportunities of crossing disciplinary boundaries
Some of the challenges I encountered along the way
How the book speaks to the current moment in Turkey and beyond
What comes next
Anything else that people might like to ask about
The book is available for purchase at the website linked above, but it is also available open access as an .epub for your kindle or a .pdf for your computer. You can see all the options at the LuminosOA website.
In the meantime, I would be very grateful if you would share the book with your friends and colleagues. Placing Islam is addressed to an academic audience, but I think the book should also speak to people with a love for the texture of old cities and a curiosity for the complicated ways that we make places by telling stories about the cities in which we live. Back in two weeks, if not before.