Born in Istanbul, I came to Columbia in the fall of 2003 to pursue my undergraduate education (mainly to be able to take classes with Edward Said). After getting over the terrible news of October of that same year, I had the pleasure and privilege of working with some of the best professors in their fields, particularly at MEALAC. This was also the main reason behind my desire to stay at the same department for my graduate studies.

In my research, I focus on minority cultures of Turkey – with ‘minority’ defined as an effect of particular processes of ‘minoritization’ rather than in quantitative terms – concentrating on questions of national culture, national narrative, ethnicity, language, moments of minoritization, identity and translation. In a more general sense, I am interested in the intellectual histories of late Ottoman Empire and post-Republican Turkey, modern literatures of Turkish and Arabic as well as a Turkish Studies paradigm beyond historical approaches to the Ottoman Empire. During my first year in the program I will be writing an MA thesis tentatively titled “(Re-)Learning Cosmopolitanism: Modern Pedagogies of Tradition” exploring alternatives to the national narrative as well as the problematics of one such alternative, that of modern cosmopolitanism, through a reading of two recent novels (The Saint of Incipient Insanities and The Bastard of Istanbul) by the Turkish author Elif Shafak.

My other interests include – but are not limited to – the recent literature on secularism, nationalism, literary theory and post-coloniality. My languages are Turkish (modern and Ottoman/native), German (near native), Arabic, Spanish (reading) and Hebrew (beginning). In addition to MEALAC, I am also affiliated to the Institute of Comparative Literature and Society and do my best to follow the happenings at Institute of Religion, Culture and Public Life, Consortium for Intellectual and Cultural History, Center for Literary Translation as well as the Turkish-Ottoman Studies Seminar here at Columbia.

Editor of Turkish translation for George Saliba’s latest book upcoming early 2009

Faculty Fellow at MEALAC, GSAS, Columbia University Fall 2008 – Spring 2013

Columbia Grant, Columbia College Fall 2003 – Fall 2007

Columbia College Dean’s List
Fall, Spring 2007

Columbia Bronze Leadership Award Spring 2005

Project Tolerance Fellow Fall 2004