FIELDS:
Literary and cultural studies theory, literature, cultural studies, popular culture, film, women and gender, and nationalism in modern Turkey, Balkans and the Middle East.
BIOGRAPHY:
The main focus of my research is Turkish cultural studies. I am a modernist; my work covers a range from the early twentieth century to the present. I explore modern Turkish literature and popular culture, cinema, and women and gender in Turkey. These are topics I approach historically and through an interdisciplinary cultural studies methodology.
I received my Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin with additional doctoral work at Ankara University. I was a recipient of a research scholarship from the Freie University in Berlin and a doctoral scholarship from Fulbright.
I have publications on late-Ottoman and early Republican women's popular press and on literature, cinema, and gender in modern Turkey. My book Social Trauma and Telecinematic Memory (2017) investigates how Turkish cinema and television depicted the 1980 military coup d’état as a national trauma. My more recent publications comprise the articles “From Social Marginalization to Cultural Distinction: Cinematic Representation of the Nations’ Others in the Age of Globalization "(2022), "The Honey-Tongued Storyteller”: Pleasures of Theatrical Narration in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name Is Red" (2021) and a review essay about a graphic novel about urban violence in Turkey (2021). I have given presentations at local, regional, and international venues such as Stanford University, the University of Washington in Seattle, Boston University’s Elie Wiesel Center, Istanbul’s Boğaziçi Üniversity, and Seoul National University.
Between 1997 and 2018 I also taught Turkish Language and Literature at PSU’s Department of World Languages and Literatures, serving briefly as the department’s associate chair (2012-2014). During this time, I participated in workshops and seminars on teaching and learning in university settings, including training for Oral Proficiency Interview (2014). I share the position that teaching and learning are collaborative processes. In my classes, I encourage my students to participate actively in classroom discussions and individual and group presentations.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
Books
2017 Social Trauma and Telecinematic Memory: Imagining the Turkish Nation since the 1980 Coup (hardback by Palgrave Macmillan; eBook by Springer). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59722-5
Articles, Chapters, Reviews, and Interviews
2022 “From Social Marginalization to Cultural Distinction: Cinematic Representation of the Nation’s Others in the Age of Globalization.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, DOI: 10.1080/10509208.2022.2041957
2021 “Perils of Urban Wilderness: Turkey in the 1970s and After, Current History 120 (830): 374–376. https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.2021.120.830.374
2020 “‘The Honey-Tongued Storyteller’: Pleasures of Theatrical Narration in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name Is Red” included in the online Festschrift compiled in honor of Dr. Erika Gilson.
2018 (with Craig Epplin) “A Conversation with Ece Temelkuran” in Music & Literature, September. https://www.musicandliterature.org/features/2018/9/6/a-conversation-with-ece-temelkuran
2015 “Gender and Memory in the Films of Tomris Giritlioğlu and Yeşim Ustaoğlu” in New Perspectives on Turkey, 53, 137-171. doi:10.1017/npt.2015.21
“Sevgi Soysal’ın “Ayı Boyamak” Adlı Hikayesinde Kimlik, Cinsiyet ve Temsili (Performatif) Dönüşümler” [Identity, Gender and Performative Transformations in Sevgi Soysal’s Short Story Entitled “Painting the Moon””] in S. Şahin and İ. Şahbenderoğlu, İsyankar Neşe. Sevgi Soysal Kitabı. İstanbul: İletişim, pp. 247-264.
2008 "Türk Edebiyatı Kanonu ve Ulusal Kimliğin Sınırları" [The Canon of Turkish Literature and the Limits of National Identity], Pasaj Edebiyat Eleştirisi Dergisi [Passage Journal of Literary Criticism], No. 6 Special Issue on the literary canon. (November 2007-May 2008): 44-69.
2004 "Advertising Modernity in Women's World: Women's Lifestyle and Leisure in Late-Ottoman Istanbul," HAWWA, Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World, Vol. 2. No.1 (2004): 34-63. Also available online at www.brill.nl
1998 “Women of Turkey in American Missionary Texts,” in Deconstructing Images of “The Turkish Woman”, ed. Zehra Arat, New York: St. Martin’s Press, pp. 101-123; reprinted in Deconstructing Images of “The Turkish Woman”, ed. Zehra Arat, London: Macmillan.