NELC is pleased to welcome Canan Bolel, who will be graduating from the University of Washington’s Near and Middle East Studies Interdisciplinary PhD Program this spring. Ms. Bolel will join us in the coming Autumn Quarter as an Assistant Professor in Jewish Cultures, Literature and Languages of the Eastern Mediterranean, with a focus on the Sephardic experience. Her work focuses on the experiences of the Jewish population in mid to late 19th century Ottoman Izmir. Her dissertation is entitled Constructions of Jewish Modernity and Marginality in Izmir, 1860–1907. This work brings into focus marginality as a core concept helpful for analysis of Sephardic Jewish experiences and selfhood in the late Ottoman Empire. Ms. Bolel's research portrays how poverty, disease, foreignness, and/or the status of the religious convert contribute to complexities of identity. She is also a translator of children’s literature, and is currently developing research on late 19th century satirical texts that were composed in Ladino. She works in multiple languages, including Ladino, Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, French, Hebrew, Arabic, Spanish, and Russian, and looks forward to teaching courses on Ladino and Sephardic literature and culture.