Nancy Bisaha
Associate Professor of History, and Director of Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Office: Swift 38A
Phone: 437-5678
Contact Nancy Bisaha
Nancy Bisaha was born and raised in central New Jersey. She received her B.A. from Rutgers College in 1990 and her Ph. D. from Cornell University in 1997. Working under the direction of John Najemy, she completed her dissertation, "Renasissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks." While writing the dissertation. she spent a year in Florence, Italy collecting archival and manuscript sources. Bisaha's research examines the ways in which humanists created an intellectual discourse depicting the Ottoman Turks as a cultural and religious other.
In addition to teaching survey courses on the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Bisaha teaches courses such as " The Dark Ages c. 400-900., " and the "The Crusades." Before coming to Vassar, Bisaha taught courses at Rutgers University, The College of New Jersey, Drew University, and Monmouth University.
Publications
Books
Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004)
Articles
“Pope Pius II and the Crusade,” in Crusading in the Fifteenth Century: Message and Impact, ed. Norman Housley (Palgrave, November 2004)
“Pius II’s Letter to Sultan Mehmed II: A Reexamination,” Crusades 1 (2002)
“Petrarch’s Vision of the Muslim and Byzantine East,” Speculum 76 no. 2 (April 2001)
“The Early Ottoman Empire,” in Medieval Trade, Travel, and Exploration: An Encyclopedia, ed. John B. Friedman (Garland Press, 2000)
“New Barbarian or Worthy Adversary? Humanist Constructs of the Ottoman Turks in Fifteenth-Century Italy,” in Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Perceptions of the Other, eds. Michael Frassetto and David Blanks (St. Martin’s Press, 1999)
Reviews
Anthony Grafton’s Bring Out Your Dead (H-Net, August 2004)
Ongoing reviews for CHOICE magazine.