Research
My Research Interests
My general research interests are in transnational cinema, Turkish-German studies, Weimar cinema, Orientalist media, Turkish artist exiles in Europe, 20th-21st century German culture, European studies.
New Projects
My second book project developed from my research and publication on the Orientalist fantasies of Baron Max von Oppenheim and my interest in Orientalist media depictions in general. This larger project, tentatively entitled Weimar Orientalisms: Orientalist Film and Visual Culture in the Weimar Republic, investigates filmic and other visual imaginings of the Weimar period and their varying Orientalist depictions, contextualized within a broader German visual culture. I received the Provost's Study in a Second Discipline Fellowship (UGA) for Spring 2021 to begin the founding work for this new study and engage with art historical scholarship. I further received the Willson Center Research Fellowship 2022-2023 (UGA) to conduct archival research and work on this book project in Spring 2023.
Another new project was inspired by my work on Turkish-German cinema and the references that were created, especially in the cinema of Fatih Akin, to Turkish artists of the 1980s such as Yilmaz Güney and Tuncel Kurtiz. Tentatively entitled Turkish Exiles, European Artists, this projects scrutinizes the transnational connections and collaborations of Turkish Cold War artists (from the film, theater, music, and art scenes) in European exile (e.g. Germany, France, and Sweden) of the 1980s and beyond. I presented various aspects of initial research outcomes at the GSA conferences in Pittsburgh, PA (2018) and in Portland, OR (2019), and at WiG (2019). I deliberated on feminist artists of this generation for the CES conference in Reykjavik, Iceland (2021), later changed to a virtual conference. An article-length study on this project,"Turkish Émigrés, European Artists: Re/Discovering a Web of Turkish-European Artists in 1980s West-Germany and Europe," was published in Monatshefte 113.2 (2021): 186-207.
First Book
In 2019 I published the first in-depth (English language) monograph on Fatih Akın and his cinema, Fatih Akın's Cinema and the New Sound of Europe (Indiana UP, 2019). Focusing on Akın's distinctive visions of regional and local aspects in Europe, I argue that his cosmopolitan, polyphonic films challenge existing notions of Europe and Europeanness. With his aesthetics of heterogeneity–as I call it–Akın's cinematic Europe questions particularly notions of a clear-cut and national Europe. One of the major innovations of Akın's cinema is his subtle exhibit of changing sounds of Europe. This cinematic Europe threatens, in particular, fantasies of homogeneity and monolingualism.
My book includes two comparative sections. The first is an analysis of a larger European context and juxtaposes Akın's use of cinematic space, language, and music to other European directors such as Mathieu Kassovitz, Yamina Benguigui, Michael Haneke, and Stephen Frears, whose films display aspects of transnational cinema. Here, I argue that minority filmmakers such as Akın or Benguigui, but also filmmakers who are commonly not solely associated with minority cinema such as Frears, Haneke, and Kassovitz display a multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan Europe that disseminates images and sounds of a fundamentally changed Europe, a Europe which exists and operates well beyond the borders of "Fortress Europe." The second is based on intertextualities within Akın's cinema and looks at his cinema in the context of Turkish cinema, that is contemporary New Turkish Cinema as well as political and mainstream cinema from the 1970s and 80s (Yesilcam and Young Turkish Cinema). I argue that through his intertextualities, Akin, in fact, creates a transnational film history.
My general research interests are in transnational cinema, Turkish-German studies, Weimar cinema, Orientalist media, Turkish artist exiles in Europe, 20th-21st century German culture, European studies.
New Projects
My second book project developed from my research and publication on the Orientalist fantasies of Baron Max von Oppenheim and my interest in Orientalist media depictions in general. This larger project, tentatively entitled Weimar Orientalisms: Orientalist Film and Visual Culture in the Weimar Republic, investigates filmic and other visual imaginings of the Weimar period and their varying Orientalist depictions, contextualized within a broader German visual culture. I received the Provost's Study in a Second Discipline Fellowship (UGA) for Spring 2021 to begin the founding work for this new study and engage with art historical scholarship. I further received the Willson Center Research Fellowship 2022-2023 (UGA) to conduct archival research and work on this book project in Spring 2023.
Another new project was inspired by my work on Turkish-German cinema and the references that were created, especially in the cinema of Fatih Akin, to Turkish artists of the 1980s such as Yilmaz Güney and Tuncel Kurtiz. Tentatively entitled Turkish Exiles, European Artists, this projects scrutinizes the transnational connections and collaborations of Turkish Cold War artists (from the film, theater, music, and art scenes) in European exile (e.g. Germany, France, and Sweden) of the 1980s and beyond. I presented various aspects of initial research outcomes at the GSA conferences in Pittsburgh, PA (2018) and in Portland, OR (2019), and at WiG (2019). I deliberated on feminist artists of this generation for the CES conference in Reykjavik, Iceland (2021), later changed to a virtual conference. An article-length study on this project,"Turkish Émigrés, European Artists: Re/Discovering a Web of Turkish-European Artists in 1980s West-Germany and Europe," was published in Monatshefte 113.2 (2021): 186-207.
First Book
In 2019 I published the first in-depth (English language) monograph on Fatih Akın and his cinema, Fatih Akın's Cinema and the New Sound of Europe (Indiana UP, 2019). Focusing on Akın's distinctive visions of regional and local aspects in Europe, I argue that his cosmopolitan, polyphonic films challenge existing notions of Europe and Europeanness. With his aesthetics of heterogeneity–as I call it–Akın's cinematic Europe questions particularly notions of a clear-cut and national Europe. One of the major innovations of Akın's cinema is his subtle exhibit of changing sounds of Europe. This cinematic Europe threatens, in particular, fantasies of homogeneity and monolingualism.
My book includes two comparative sections. The first is an analysis of a larger European context and juxtaposes Akın's use of cinematic space, language, and music to other European directors such as Mathieu Kassovitz, Yamina Benguigui, Michael Haneke, and Stephen Frears, whose films display aspects of transnational cinema. Here, I argue that minority filmmakers such as Akın or Benguigui, but also filmmakers who are commonly not solely associated with minority cinema such as Frears, Haneke, and Kassovitz display a multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan Europe that disseminates images and sounds of a fundamentally changed Europe, a Europe which exists and operates well beyond the borders of "Fortress Europe." The second is based on intertextualities within Akın's cinema and looks at his cinema in the context of Turkish cinema, that is contemporary New Turkish Cinema as well as political and mainstream cinema from the 1970s and 80s (Yesilcam and Young Turkish Cinema). I argue that through his intertextualities, Akin, in fact, creates a transnational film history.