Explore the world of the dragomans (diplomatic interpreters) in early modern Istanbul, a professional cadre both copious and wildly uneven in its archival traces. Learn of the dragomans’ role in mediating enduring concepts of Ottoman politics, history, and language for multiple publics and their ability to weave distinct kinship and professional networks across different scales simultaneously.

E. Natalie Rothman is an associate professor of history at the University of Toronto, interested in the history of Venetian-Ottoman cultural mediation in the early modern period, diplomatic translation and translators, the genealogies of Orientalism, the history of archives, and digital scholarship. Rothman is the author of the award-winning book Brokering Empire: Trans-Imperial Subjects between Venice and Istanbul (2011), and is currently completing The Dragoman Renaissance: Diplomatic Interpreters and the Routes of Orientalism.