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Contact Info: Department of History Tufts University East Hall, room 109 Medford, MA 02155 617.627.2702 Email Prof. Baghdiantz McCabe Office Hours: Monday 11:00-12:00 & Tuesday 3:00-4:00

Biography

I came to Tufts in 1998, after a decade of teaching, to be the first holder of the Darakjian and Jafarian Chair, an endowed chair in Armenian history established by a Tufts alumna. I became a historian by choice after being sent to medical school for some years. I had lived in eight countries and went to school in six languages before the age of 18, the many cultures that became my own sparked my interest in history. I went to graduate school twice: once to study European history at the Sorbonne in Paris and later to study Armenian history and Middle-Eastern history in New York at Columbia. My own dissertation at Columbia focused on the Armenian diaspora and their merchant networks. Since then my books and articles have been on different themes, the silk trade, the spice trade, slavery, diaspora, travelers and orientalism, yet they are all transregional studies which focus on economic and intellectual exchanges within Eurasia in the early modern period. My work has been supported by several fellowships, the last was at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard. At Tufts I was honored to receive the Faculty Research Awards Committee's Distinguished Scholar Award in May 2008.

I enjoy writing and research as much as I do teaching. I teach both undergraduate and graduate courses in the history department. The first courses I developed at Tufts in 1998 were Modern Armenia/The Caucasus, given alternatively each Spring and some transregional course on the history of food and on travelers. The latest course I have developed is The History of Consumption for International Relations. At Tufts I am part of the core faculty of IR and affiliated faculty to the Fares Center.

Education

• Ph.D. in History, Columbia University, 1993
• M.A. in Philosophy, Columbia University, 1986
• D.E.A. in Modern European History, Sorbonne University, 1982
• M.A. in Modern European History, Sorbonne University, 1981
• B.A. in European History and Art History, Sorbonne University, 1978

Major Publications

• Orientalism in Early Modern France Eurasian Trade, Exoticism, and the Ancien Régime, Oxford, 2008
• Co-editor: Diaspora Entrepreneurial Networks: Four Centuries of History, Oxford, Berg, 2005
• Co-author: Slaves of the Shah: New Elites of Isfahan, London, I. B Tauris, 2004
• Du bon usage du thé et des épices en Asie Réponses à Monsieur Cabart de Villarmont by Jean Chardin, établi, présenté et commenté par Ina Baghdiantz McCabe.L'Inventaire, Actes Sud, Paris, November, 2002.
• The Shah's Silk for Europe's Silver:  The Eurasian Trade of the Julfa Armenians in Safavid Iran and India.  (1530-1750).  University of Pennsylvania, 1999.
• "Merchant Capital and Knowledge:  The Financing of Early Printing Presses by the Eurasian Silk Trade of New Julfa." in Treasures in Heaven:  Armenian Art, Religion, and Society. (Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, 1998)

Courses

• History 6: World Trade, 1000-2000
• History 24: Early Modern Europe & the World
• History 66: Modern Armenia, 1800-1920
• History 67: The Caucasus and Armenia in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Eras, 1918-2000
• History 103: Consumption, Power and Identity: Food and Clothing in Modern Times. A socio-economic history of the use of luxury goods and staples from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.
• History 104: Gender, Travel and Imperialism: European Women in Asia, Africa and the Americas.