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Publication Metadata only (Post) humanist tangles in social ecology and new materialism(Palgrave, 2017) Department of Comparative Literature; Ergin, Meliz; Faculty Member; Department of Comparative Literature; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 101428This chapter argues that entanglements lie at the core of two prominent schools of ecological thought: social ecology and new materialism. While social ecology, spearheaded by Murray Bookchin, stresses the tangle of ecological and socio-political issues and advocates for a transformative viewpoint in both spheres, new materialism destabilizes the nature/culture dichotomy by reading the production of matter and meaning as co-extensive praxes and by defining phenomena, in Karen Barad’s terms, as the “ontological inseparability of intra-acting agencies.” Ergin reads social ecology and new materialism, respectively, in relation to deconstruction to tease out the different models of entanglement in each school of thought and to elucidate what is at stake in the motif of entanglement. She rethinks these three strands of thought vis-à-vis each other to capture some of the breadth and variety in reconceptualizations of natural-social and material-discursive entanglements.Publication Metadata only 2 July 1993 in Turkish Literature: representations of the Sivas Massacre(Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2014) Department of Comparative Literature; Ağıl, Nazmi; Faculty Member; Department of Comparative Literature; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 50749On 2 July 1993 the fire set on Hotel Madimak in Sivas, Turkey by religious fanatics claimed the lives of 37 people. Such traumatic events need to be narrated to heal the wound they have opened in the public consciousness. Yet it is also true that they pose a serious challenge to the narrator as they lie beyond the reach of usual means of representation. This article examines the ways the massacre is represented in the two recent Turkish novels, Atesve Kugu (Fire and the Swan) by Burhan Gunel and Seytan Minareleri (Seashells) by Hidayet Karakus, with a view to examining the approaches these works offer to meet the challenge.Publication Metadata only An East-West conversation: Gürpınar's A Marriage under the Comet and Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales(Wiley, 2018) Department of Comparative Literature; Ağıl, Nazmi; Faculty Member; Department of Comparative Literature; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 50749The Turkish writer Huseyin Rahmi Gurpnar's 1922 novel A Marriage under the Comet shows similarities with The Miller's Tale and The Wife of Bath's Tale from Chaucer's fourteenth-century The Canterbury Tales in terms of its subject and its characters. In the first part of the novel, Irfan, like Nicholas, makes fun of the uneducated people, frightening them with his astrological explanations and predictions. The second part of the novel, like The Wife of Bath's Tale, ends with a speech on an ideal marriage. Here too, it is advised that when choosing his/her spouse, one must value inner beauty more than appearance and that if they want a happy marriage, husbands should submit their will to their wives. The enormous interest shown the Turkish version of The Canterbury Tales, since it was translated in 1994 for the first time, might be attributed to these similarities. In the tales above, Chaucer satirizes the religious, sexual, and class culture of the English society of his age unsparingly. It is possible that Gurpnar's well-loved novel, which adapts similar stories from a different culture and time to the local context, might have played a role in preparing the relatively more conservative Turkish readers for Chaucer's work, which they would meet eighty years later. Turk yazar Huseyin Rahmi Gurpnar'n 1912'de yaynlanan Kuyruklu Yldz Altnda Bir izdivac adl roman, Chaucer'n Canterbury Hikayeleri'ned Deirmenci ve Bath'l Kadn'n anlattklar hikayelere konu ve karakter acsndan benzerlikler gosterir. Soyle ki, romann birinci bolumundeki irfan karaketri Nicholas gibi astrolojik acklamalaryla cahil insanlar korkutark elenir. ikinci bolum ise, Bath'l Kadn'n anlats gibi, ideal evlilik uzerine bir soylevle biter ve yine e seciminde karakter guzelliine baklmas, mutlu beraberlik icin kocalarn iradelerini elerine teslim etmesi tavsiye edilir. 1994 ylnda eksiksiz olarak Turkceye cevrilen Canterbury Hikayeleri'nin bunca yldr gorduu buyuk ilgi soz konusu benzerlikler uzerinden acklanabilir. Buna gore, farkl bir kulturde din, cinsiye ve snf gibi konulardaki yanllar serbest bir dille hicveden hakayeleri yerel kulture uygun balam ve uslupla yeniden anlatan Gurpnar'n bu cok sevilen roman, gorece muhafazakar yeni okur kitlesini yakla 80 yl sonra tanacaklar Canterbury Hikayeleri icin hazrlamada rol oynam olmaldr.Publication Metadata only An Ottoman holy land: two early modern travel accounts and imperial subjectivity(Purdue University Press, 2021) Bashkin, Orit; Department of Comparative Literature; Kim, Sooyong; Faculty Member; Department of Comparative Literature; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 52305This study investigates how the Holy Land was experienced and perceived in the early modern era, by comparing the accounts of two travelers representing distinct but complementary vantage points: Evliya Celebi (d. ca. 1685), a Sunni Muslim from Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, and Shemu'el ben David (d. 1673), a Karaite Jew from the Crimean Khanate, a vassal state on the periphery. Considering their specific views of the Holy Land and the kinds of traditions that the two contemporaries relate about the same sites they visited, we argue that both perceived the Holy Land not only through an intersecting scriptural lens, but also through a similar imperial lens that drew attention to and valorized the Ottoman presence over the sacred territory. Thus more broadly, the comparative study offers an alternative non-Eurocentric frame for exploring the relationship between empire, subject, and the holy in the early modern era.Publication Metadata only Beat Turkey: a belated influence(Routledge, 2018) NA; Department of Comparative Literature; Mortenson, Erik; Faculty Member; Department of Comparative Literature; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; N/AN/APublication Metadata only Canons as reservoirs: the Ottoman ocean in Ziya Pasha's Harabat and reframing the history of comparative literature(Penn State University Press, 2017) Department of Comparative Literature; Arslan, Ceylan Ceyhun; Faculty Member; Department of Comparative Literature; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 280297This article analyzes the introduction of Ziya Pasha's Ottoman anthology Harabat (AH 1291-1292 [1 8 74/1875-1875/1876]), which provides a comparative history of Arabic, Turkish, and Persian literatures. I argue that Harabat compiles texts from diverse geographical and temporal origins and, instead of defining them as members of distinct national traditions, projects this compilation as what I call a literary "reservoir" that constitutes the multilingual Ottoman canon. My argument draws upon Ziya Pasha's characterization of the Ottoman culture as an "ocean" that encompasses Arabic, Persian, and Turkish "streams." This description undermines the typical scholarly view that the Ottoman culture emerged and developed under Arabic and Persian influences. I then reframe our understanding of canonization through using the conceptual repertoire that the world literature scholarship has brought into literary studies-circulations, target culture, and source culture. Building upon John Guillory's work on the process of canon formation, I propose that each source text can be "deracinated" when its context is ignored in the target culture to facilitate this text's incorporation into a new canon, or "reservoir." This article finally calls for rewriting the history of comparative and world literature by demonstrating that Harabat is constitutive of the nineteenth-century comparative literature paradigm.Publication Metadata only Cartographic interventions: construction of identity through spatial reconfiguration in post/colonial Italy(Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2012) Department of Comparative Literature; Ergin, Meliz; Faculty Member; Department of Comparative Literature; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 101428N/APublication Open Access Chronometrics in the modern metropolis: the city, the past and collective memory in A.H. Tanpınar(Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Press, 2015) Department of Comparative Literature; Dolcerocca, Özen Nergis; Faculty Member; Department of Comparative Literature; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 237469Publication Metadata only Comparative ecocriticism: an introduction(Palgrave, 2017) Department of Comparative Literature; Ergin, Meliz; Faculty Member; Department of Comparative Literature; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 101428The introduction explains the rationale of the book, highlighting its contribution to ecocritical theory, comparative ecocriticism, and ecopoetics. The theoretical novelty of the book derives from its comparative and cross-disciplinary approach in the first two chapters which investigate the theoretically fertile links between deconstruction, social ecology, and new materialism. Ergin makes a compelling case for a new poetics structured around the concept of “entanglement,” and outlines entanglements in these three strands of thought so as to demonstrate the relevance of this concept in theoretical terms. She then examines the ecological intersections of nature and society through a comparative analysis of the works of the American poet Juliana Spahr and the Turkish writer Latife Tekin. As the first book-length study of comparative Turkish and American ecocriticism, the book responds to the immense need for theorizing about ecology and poetics across new geographical, cultural, and linguistic contexts.Publication Metadata only Deconstructive ecocriticism(Palgrave, 2017) Department of Comparative Literature; Ergin, Meliz; Faculty Member; Department of Comparative Literature; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 101428This chapter proposes advancing a mode of ecocritical thought free of any transcendental notion of nature, and explores the distinction between nature writing and ecological literature by highlighting the contrast between the Romantic and the revised sublime. Ergin argues that contemporary eco-narratives focus on the revised sublime to present a complex view of natural-social entanglements in light of the new scale of the capitalist-industrialist system and technology. She then turns to Derrida’s work to foreground entanglement as a key concept in deconstruction and to rethink its benefits for ecocritical thought. Ergin introduces the notion of ‘ecological text’ to emphasize textuality as a form of entanglement that proves useful in thinking about ecological interdependence and uncertainty. This chapter advances an improved understanding of the ethics of complicity and responsibility by articulating our embeddedness in the ecological (con)text and its material-discursive network.