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The eighteenth century saw the Ottoman capital of Istanbul transformed by the introduction of a brand-new style of architecture that scholars have dubbed the Ottoman Baroque. Informed, as its name suggests, by Western European models, this new manner of building heralded a permanent shift in late Ottoman visual culture that has been reductively discussed as decadent “Westernization.” This seminar will challenge the conventional wisdom and reconsider the Ottoman Baroque as a timely and sophisticated artistic statement by which the empire reaffirmed its global standing in terms that were both locally rooted and internationally resonant. Topics to be addressed include the semiotics of style; the roles and relationships of patrons, artists, and viewers; architecture as a locus of ceremonial and spectacle; and cross-cultural connections and networks. Although focusing on the architecture of eighteenth-century Istanbul, the seminar will extend into other regions and art forms that demonstrate the impact of the Ottoman Baroque, and it will also consider the style’s afterlife in the context of nineteenth-century Ottoman modernity.