Professor Daniel Stolz (Kemal H. Karpat Assistant Professor of History) conducts research on the history of the late Ottoman Empire and the emergence of the modern Middle East in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Specifically, he examines how Ottomans used new kinds of technical knowledge to transform their society in the decades before World War I. His first book,The Lighthouse and the Observatory: Islam, Science, and Empire in Late Ottoman Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2018) shows how new astronomical practices enabled the growth of the modern Egyptian state, as well as the emergence of Islamic movements that emphasized uniform and precise observance of ritual duties. You can read an interview with Dr. Stolz about the book or hear Dr. Stolz discuss his book. Finally, Dr. Stolz responded to two reviews of the book on the SSRC blog called The Immanent Frame: Secularism, Religion, and the Public Sphere.