Prof. Cengiz Sisman

Dr. Cengiz Sisman earned his bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. He went on to study Religious Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia for his first M.A., and then pursued a second master’s in History and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University — where he also completed his Ph.D. in 2004. During his doctoral research, he spent a year as a special student at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Şişman has taught at several universities in both Türkiye (including Boğaziçi, Koç University and Bilkent University) and the United States (such as Brandeis University and Furman University). Since 2015 he has been a professor of History at University of Houston–Clear Lake (UHCL). He is best known for his scholarship on religious minorities, conversion, mysticism, and crypto-religious communities in the Ottoman Empire, particularly focusing on the historical group known as the “Dönmes” (converted Jews). His book The Burden of Silence: Sabbatai Sevi and the Evolution of the Ottoman-Turkish Dönmes (Oxford University Press, 2015) is considered a landmark academic work — widely reviewed and translated, and discussed in scholarly venues in multiple languages. Şişman’s courses cover world history, Islamic empires, history of Jews and Christians in Islamic lands, modern Middle East, and inter-religious dynamics. His work is characterized by rigorous archival research, a deep examination of messianism, religious syncretism, identity, and the complex interweaving of religion, conversion, and social change in history.