Dear OTSA Members,
I'm writing to remind you that tomorrow we will be hosting the next event in our W'OTSAp Fridays series tomorrow with Zozan Pehlivan, co-winner of the 2025 OTSA Book Prize. Pehlivan's book The Political Ecology of Violence: Peasants and Pastoralists in the Last Ottoman Century draws critical connections between extreme climatic disruptions and patterns of interethnic and inter-communal violence in late Ottoman Kurdistan. The event will begin at 1PM EST/12PM CST/10AM PST. You can register for the event at the link below, and read more about the event and future W'OTSAp sessions here.
In addition to this event, we have a few more announcements:
Save the Date: OTSA will be hosting our biannual conference October 9-11, 2026 in Madison, Wisconsin! There will be more information, including a call for abstracts coming soon, but please mark your calendars now. Our last conference, in 2024, was an incredible experience for all, and we are excited to come together again as a community this fall.
New Website and Dues Changes: OTSA will be launching a fully redesigned website in the near future, powered by the Ghost platform! We are looking forward to having a fresher look and improved capabilities to communicate with our members and audience. As part of the redesign, we will be revising our membership structure. We will honor any and all memberships purchased at the current rates for the upcoming year. After the website launches, the new rates will be as follows:
International Members and Students – $25
Retirees and Non-Tenure Track Faculty – $50
Tenured and Tenure-track Faculty – $100
We realize this will reflect a modest increase for some, but not all, of our members. We encourage you to renew your membership now at lower rates if you will be impacted by this change.
Prizes: We anticipate releasing the call for submissions for our 2026 Prizes after the launch of the new website, within the next month. Due dates for submissions will likely be in mid-June. We are currently constructing committees to renew prizes, you may be contacted by members of our board, nominating committee, or committee chairs regarding service on a prize committee. We very much rely on our members to conduct our awards process in a timely and professional manner, so we do hope that if you are contacted, you will make every effort to serve.
Thank you all for being with us, and I look forward to seeing many of you at the event tomorrow!
Sincerely,
James Ryan
Executive Director