M. Brett Wilson

M. Brett Wilson is Associate Professor of History and Public Policy. His research and teaching engage the fields of religious, intellectual, and cultural history with specialization in late Ottoman and modern Turkish contexts. Originally from the southeastern United States, he earned his MA and PhD at Duke University.

His first book Translating the Qur’an in an Age of Nationalism: Print Culture and Modern Islam in Turkey (Oxford University Press, 2014) is a cultural history of printing and translating the Qur'an. It explores how and why Muslim intellectuals from around the globe envisioned the translation of the Qur'an as a milestone for national culture, modernization, and religious reform. 

In his second project, Wilson edited and translated the controversial late Ottoman novel  Nur Baba (1922) by Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, published as Nur Baba: A Sufi Novel of Late Ottoman Istanbul (Routledge, 2023).  A tale of illicit romance and a spiritual quest gone wrong, it was the first Turkish novel that harshly criticized Sufism while linking them with national culture and history.

His current book project examines the abolition of Sufi orders in the early Turkish Republic and the subsequent transformation of Ottoman Sufi traditions into national culture and heritage.