Carel Bertram

B.A. and M.A. Advisor and Undergraduate Coordinator

Office: HUM 325
Office Hours: Please e-mail for current office hours
Phone: 338-3125
Email: carel@sfsu.edu

Carel Bertram was trained in Near Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley (M.A.) and in Art and Architectural History at UCLA (Ph.D.) Her field is urban history and historical consciousness in the Islamic world. Dr. Bertram's book, Imagining the Turkish House: Collective Visions of Home, was published by the University of Texas Press in 2008. You can find the table of contents and a lengthy excerpt at: http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/berima.html

Dr. Bertram is particularly interested in the richness and diversity of Islamic culture, and therefore includes in her teaching and research the many non Muslim groups who made up (and still make up) its mosaic. She has worked extensively on Muslims, Jews and Christians in Bosnia, and is currently studying Diaspora Armenians from Anatolia, investigating their histories and historic consciousness as they make pilgrimages to the lost homes of their families.

In her teaching and research, Dr. Bertram asks, “how do we find out how individuals and groups understood their world?” She answers this through the lens of the Humanities with historically contextualized studies of cultural production and representation. What did historical actors produce (art, architecture, literature, poetry, and, especially places); what did these mean to their makers and, more importantly, how were these experienced over time? Thus, Dr. Bertram studies art, such as codex and manuscript illumination and illustration (and what the reader might have known and felt) and architecture (how are buildings are used and even romanticized so that they become iconic), and particularly the complex place of the city as it is built, walked, filmed and remembered. She teaches classes on Istanbul and Jerusalem as well as on San Francisco. Other cities of interest: Sarajevo (Bosnia), Damascus (Syria), Amasya and Safranbolu(Turkey) and Vienna (Austria). Dr. Bertram is currently working on a study-abroad project to give SFSU students an opportunity to study Turkish history through field work in an in-tact Ottoman town in Anatolia.

UNDERGRADUATE COURSES:

• HUM 361 Cultural Expression in Islam
• HUM 375 Biography of a City: ISTANBUL
• HUM 376 Biography of a City: SAN FRANCISCO
• HUM 377 Biography of a City: JERUSALEM
• HUM 425 Thought and Image - Sacred and Ritual Places and Spaces
• HUM 510 Comparative Form and Culture 1
• HUM 510 Comparative Form and Culture 2

GRADUATE COURSES:

• HUM 701 Art and the Humanities - Putting Art in its Place: Paris, the move toward Modernity, Courbet and Manet
• HUM 721 Culture and Style 1 - Home, Homeland, and Literary and Artistic Texts
• HUM 721 Culture and Style 2 - City and Town: Myth, Memory and Amnesia

PUBLICATIONS

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS AND INVITED TALKS

Professional/Academic Associations

Middle East Studies Association (MESA)
Turkish Studies Association (TSA)
Society for Armenian Studies (SAS)
American Association of University Women (AAUS)