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Background

I am a PhD Candidate in Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (ASCA) at The University of Amsterdam. I hold an MA degree in Comparative Literature and French from The University of Auckland, and a BA in English Literature from Bosphorus University. I have studied French in Centre Expérimental d'étude de la Civilisation Française in Paris. Before coming to The University of Amsterdam as a docent-promovendus, I have taught at Isik University in Istanbul.

Ph D Project

My Project focuses on the relationship between cityscape and literary capital through the work of Orhan Pamuk. A prominent figure in Turkish and World Literature, a Nobel laureate in 2006, Pamuk re-presents, through his novels, Istanbul  as the locus of Turkish cultural identity, fully laden with its Ottoman, Islamic, and European legacies, and as a literary capital in theinternational scene of literature. Through close readings of the encounters between city-space and literary-space, my study explores how Pamuk's narrative establishes Istanbul as a global city within the network of literary cities.

Publications

“Een glorieuze melancholie: Orhan Pamuks liefdesverklaring aan Istanbul” Biografie Bulletin 21/1 (March 2011)

"The Locus of Identity: The Self and The City in Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul: Memories and the City." Universitätsverlag Winter in Heidelberg. Spring 2011

Framing My Name Is Red: Reading A Masterpiece in David Buyze, ed. Global Perspectives on Orhan Pamuk’s Literature: Existentialism and Politics. Palgrave MacMillan Forthcoming

“The Intimacy of Death:Reading an Image of Agony” Express, February 2008, special issue for Hrant Dink, pp. 32-34. 

“Reading My Name is Red: Unveiling a Masterpiece” The International Journal of the Humanities, Volume 5, Issue 7, 2007. pp.155-160.
 
“Turk’s Head: A Stereotype?” Anthony Barker, ed. The Power and Persistence of Stereotyping – O Poder e a Persistência dos Esteriótipos, Aveiro: Universidade de Aveiro, 2004.

Conference Presentations (selection)

“Bridges and Ellipses: Reading Orhan Pamuk andWorld Literature." ACLA Annual Conference, April 2010

“At Home: Istanbul’s Cosmopolitanism and Literature and Language Politics in Turkey. “ Institute of Advanced Study, Summer School Theory fora GlobalAge: Postcolonial and Cosmopolitan Perspectives, University of Warwick , 6-10 July 2009.

“The Killing of Hrant Dink and Politics of Turkish Nationhood,”with A. Seda Müftügil. 3rd Annual ASN World Convention, Columbia University, April 2008.

“A "Quest for The Soul of The City":A Case Study in The Poetics and Politics of Space in Orhan Pamuk's Writings” ASCA Space Soirees, November 2007

“The Tortoise Trainer : A Semiotic Reading.” ASCA International Conference :Trajectories of Commitment and Complicity: Knowledge, Politics, Cultural Production, University of Amsterdam, March2006

“A Minority in Search of Ethnic Identity in the Ottoman and Republican Turkey: Twofold subjectification in Liz Behmoaras’s The Story of a Search for Identity” BU- NAES Conference, Boğaziçi University, November 2006.

“Marketing the Borders: Establishing a New Cultural Identity” with Ayse Erek in Cultural Analysis Summer Academy, The University of Amsterdam, June 2005.

“A French Naval Officer in Istanbul: The Many Selves of Pierre Loti in Aziyade," The Endangered Planet in Literature. The World Association for Studies in Literatures in English, Doğus University, Istanbul, November 2005.

“The Turk: Conflict in the Ottoman Identity” in “Global Ethnic Networks-Old and New.” Annual Conference of American Comparative Literature Association. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, April 2004

Research Projects

ASCA Cities Project

Europeanizing Spaces: Cultural Encounters and Entangled Histories [Joint ASCA-ICG research project]



Cities Project

Link

Reading Rancière

Ph D Reading Group with Lara Mazurski

Translating Istanbul

Text of the new paragraph

Teaching at The UvA

Classics: Rereading the Ghost

Literary Worlds

Literature and Culture: Politics

Literature and Culture: The Politics of The Nobel Prize in Literature

Literature in the Actuality

Literature and Interculturality

Seven Masterpieces