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GURSEL TO LECTURE AT NAASR ON 'SENTIMENTAL KINSHIPS OF GENOCIDE'
Armenian Weekly
June 19, 2012
BELMONT, Mass.-On Thurs., June 28, Dr. Burcu Gursel will present
a critical exploration of three works considered by many as
groundbreaking in Armenian-Turkish rapprochement for their treatment
of the discovery of Armenian ancestry in Turkey in a lecture at NAASR
entitled "Sentimental Kinships of Genocide: Tragic (Mis)recognition
in My Grandmother, The Bastard of Istanbul, and The Grandchildren."
Spanning the genres of memoir, fiction, and oral history, these works
by Fethiye Cetin, Elif Safak, and Ayse Gul Altinay are analyzed by
Gursel as cornerstones of what can be called sentimental literature
proper in recent Turkish-language treatments of the Armenian Genocide.
Much like historic examples of sentimental literature that maintain
and reproduce imperial and nationalist agendas against the grain of
their own social protest and ethical malaise, these works assume a
direct relationship between showcasing pain, on the one hand, and
catharsis, moral edification, and social cohesion, on the other.
In these three works, the drama of recognizing ancestral identity
and history functions not as the tragic leveling of ideology but
instead as the foundation of its reincarnation. Dependent on the
very mythologies and fantasies of personal biological lineage that
they appear to "pluralize" or "destabilize," these works reproduce
the thinking they proclaim to be challenging.
Gursel received her bachelor's from the University of Chicago
and a Ph.D. in comparative literature and literary theory from the
University of Pennsylvania. She has taught at Sabanci University and
most recently was a post-doctoral fellow at the Forum Transregionale
Studien (Berlin). She currently lives in Istanbul and is finalizing
her book manuscript based on her dissertation, "Invasive Translations:
Violence and Mediation of the False-Colonial, France and Ottoman Egypt
(1780-1840)."
The talk begins at 8 p.m. at the National Association for Armenian
Studies and Research (NAASR) Center, 395 Concord Ave., in Belmont. For
more information, call (617) 489-1610 or e-mail [email protected].
Armenian Weekly
June 19, 2012
BELMONT, Mass.-On Thurs., June 28, Dr. Burcu Gursel will present
a critical exploration of three works considered by many as
groundbreaking in Armenian-Turkish rapprochement for their treatment
of the discovery of Armenian ancestry in Turkey in a lecture at NAASR
entitled "Sentimental Kinships of Genocide: Tragic (Mis)recognition
in My Grandmother, The Bastard of Istanbul, and The Grandchildren."
Spanning the genres of memoir, fiction, and oral history, these works
by Fethiye Cetin, Elif Safak, and Ayse Gul Altinay are analyzed by
Gursel as cornerstones of what can be called sentimental literature
proper in recent Turkish-language treatments of the Armenian Genocide.
Much like historic examples of sentimental literature that maintain
and reproduce imperial and nationalist agendas against the grain of
their own social protest and ethical malaise, these works assume a
direct relationship between showcasing pain, on the one hand, and
catharsis, moral edification, and social cohesion, on the other.
In these three works, the drama of recognizing ancestral identity
and history functions not as the tragic leveling of ideology but
instead as the foundation of its reincarnation. Dependent on the
very mythologies and fantasies of personal biological lineage that
they appear to "pluralize" or "destabilize," these works reproduce
the thinking they proclaim to be challenging.
Gursel received her bachelor's from the University of Chicago
and a Ph.D. in comparative literature and literary theory from the
University of Pennsylvania. She has taught at Sabanci University and
most recently was a post-doctoral fellow at the Forum Transregionale
Studien (Berlin). She currently lives in Istanbul and is finalizing
her book manuscript based on her dissertation, "Invasive Translations:
Violence and Mediation of the False-Colonial, France and Ottoman Egypt
(1780-1840)."
The talk begins at 8 p.m. at the National Association for Armenian
Studies and Research (NAASR) Center, 395 Concord Ave., in Belmont. For
more information, call (617) 489-1610 or e-mail [email protected].