Ana Sekulić

Princeton University, Department of History

2021 Winner (Humanities)

Conversion of the Landscape: Environment and Religious Politics in an Early Modern Ottoman Town

Ana Sekulić’s imaginative and sophisticated exploration of Muslim-Christian interactions in the early modern Ottoman Balkans takes readers from monasteries to mines to mountaintops, creating a fresh approach to scholarly storytelling and opening the environment to new forms of inquiry. The Balkan landscape, she argues, was no passive product of climate, geography or imperial tax regimes, but an active workshop of cultural and religious imaginaries between the human and non-human; here trees too must be recognized as historical actors. Theoretically and philologically rigorous, Ana Sekulić’s beautifully written work represents a profound contribution to the histories of early modern cosmologies, conversion, and community formation.

The dissertation was completed at Princeton University in the Department of History under the supervision of Molly Greene.

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