History professor uses Fulbright to teach environmental history in Turkey

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State Associate Professor of History Faisal Husain has devoted his academic career to studying the Ottoman Empire through an environmental lens.

Husain is currently bringing that unique perspective to students in the former Ottoman capital of Istanbul, Turkey, thanks to the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program. He is one of 12 Penn State faculty members who received a Fulbright Scholar Award for the 2024-25 academic year.

The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, the United States’ flagship international educational exchange program, gives recipients the opportunity to conduct advanced research, teach, and/or attend seminars abroad. The program also gives recipients the chance to interact with — and make an impact on — their host communities during their stay.

Since its inception in 1946, the Fulbright program has provided more than 400,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists and professionals of all backgrounds and fields the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas, and contribute to finding solutions to critical international problems.   

Husain is spending the academic year at Istanbul’s Boğaziçi University. It’s his second Fulbright, having received one in 2016 while working to complete his doctoral dissertation.

“Living and teaching in Istanbul through the Fulbright program is the honor of a lifetime,” he said. “I’ve heard senior colleagues describe how their Fulbright changed their lives, broadening their perspectives as scholars and global citizens. Now that I’m experiencing it myself, I can say it’s been a deeply enriching journey, blending professional growth with the kind of personal discovery that stays with you forever.”

At Boğaziçi, Husain is teaching the course “World Environmental History.” The course is tailored to his specialization in environmental history, which first emerged as an academic discipline in the 1970s and focuses largely on “how society shaped the environment over time and how the environment shaped the course of human history,” Husain said.

Among other things, he’s using the course to demonstrate the shared environmental values that exist between the U.S. and Turkey — like, for instance, their robust national park systems.

“When I teach about the national parks in Turkey, I use it as an opportunity to show how the national park idea originated in the U.S.,” Husain said. “Sharing the origins of this idea, how it blossomed in the U.S., connects our cultural approaches to nature. Environmental history becomes a powerful vehicle for my role as a cultural ambassador, allowing me to introduce my students to modern American environmental thought, advocacy and legislation. In this way, my teaching project draws on our shared environmental history to advance the Fulbright mission — fostering mutual understanding between our nations.”

For the most part, Turkish students “are no different than American students,” according to Husain.

“They grapple with the same anxieties about the environmental crises of our time,” he said. “The course is going well — there’s a real interest in it. It’s just been a matter of translating my teaching style to them. I’m confident I’ll take those lessons back to my students at Penn State.”

Besides teaching, Husain is auditing courses taught by his Turkish colleagues in hopes of gaining new insights to take back to his classroom at Penn State, he said. In addition, he regularly travels to other universities throughout the country to give talks on his research and network with other scholars.

Of course, he said, he’ll also be using his time in Istanbul to conduct research at the renowned Ottoman Archives.

Husain’s first book, “Rivers of the Sultan,” examined the Tigris and Euphrates rivers’ influence in establishing Ottoman state institutions in the empire’s eastern borderlands between the 16th and 18th centuries. His current book project is an environmental history of Ottoman frontier expansion east of the Euphrates during the 16th century.

“The great powers of that era were expanding, drawing once isolated frontiers into the burgeoning world economy,” Husain said. “My work illuminates the Ottoman experience, a vital chapter of this global story yet to be fully told. As the Ottomans expanded eastward into the heart of the Middle East — Egypt, Syria, Iraq — they faced a starkly different landscape. These arid lands, unlike the Ottoman heartland in the Balkans and Western Anatolia, posed unique ecological challenges that demanded adaptability for the empire to endure.”

Husain said he is looking forward to the remainder of his Fulbright experience, which ends in June. And he’s beyond grateful to those who helped him achieve it, including those in the college’s Office of the Dean, former and current Department of History heads Michael Kulikowski and Amy Greenberg, respectively, and colleagues who read his grant application.

“Without all of these people, I would not be here in this magnificent city, pursuing this extraordinary experience,” he said. “I thank Penn State for granting me this precious gift of time. It’s a rare privilege in academia, and one I cherish immensely.”