John Holevoet graduated from the University of St. Francis, a small Catholic university in the Chicago area, in May 2002.  While at St. Francis, he majored in history with a concentration in non-Western history.  This web site was completed as a requirement for an independent study he completed under the supervision of Dr. Jeffrey Chamberlain.  John's area of special interest has been the Ottoman Empire, since he first traveled to  Turkey in 1996.  As you might imagine, St. Francis offered John few opportunities to study the Ottomans.  His desire to do so served as the inspiration for this project.  Recently John Has been accepted to graduate programs at both the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  In the end, he has opted to attend UW-Madison in the fall of 2002.  There, while working on his M.A. and Ph.D., he will be fortunate enough to work with renowned Ottoman historian Kemal Karpat.  Specifically, John hopes that his research will focus on the role of gender and sexuality in Ottoman society.