Dr. Steve Ortega has a bachelor’s degree from New York University, a master's degree from Harvard University and a PhD from the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. He served as the director of the History MA program, which includes dual-degree studies in history/archives management and history/MAT.
Ortega's primary teaching fields are Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, and world history. He is interested in trans-national contact between people of different places. As the American cultural and social landscape changes, new questions are constantly being raised about what it means to be a global citizen, and he actively looks to have his students think about the ways that people have defined and continue to re-define themselves. He believes that this type of inquiry helps students think broadly about the ways that history can help them think critically and creatively about both local and global challenges.
His research also has focused on cross-cultural topics. In his world history textbook Thinking Past (Oxford: Oxford University Press), every chapter asks different questions such as: What is an empire? What led to the rise of universal religions? His scholarly book, Negotiating Trans-cultural Relations in the Early Modern Mediterranean: Ottoman-Venetian Encounters (Aldershot: Ashgate Press), centers on relations between Venice and the Ottoman Empire. In the work, he examines the different personal, institutional, and regional connections that existed between Ottomans and Venetians and between the two states and others in the Mediterranean such as the Spanish empire. The book seeks to dispel the notion of ongoing civilizational conflict and looks to see how power was projected from different sites throughout the region. While religious differences played a major role in how people defined themselves, legal decision making, gender relations, and status was defined by similar thinking and similar cultural sensibilities.
Courses
- HIST 100-101 World Civilizations I and II
- HIST 205 Global Environmental History
- HIST 231 Understanding Islam in Historical Perspective
- HIST 254 History through Novels and Films
- HIST 251 World Historical Perspectives on 9/11
- HIST 361-561 Cross-Cultural Encounters: Contacts, Connections and Conflict
- HIST 365-565 9/11 Narratives