Critical Perspective Seminar Series
This seminar series are held monthly, either face to face or online, in collaboration with BaÅŸkent University, Faculty of Science and Letters, Department of American Culture and Literature. In these seminars each presenter offers diverse and in depth analysis of a topic of interest in literary, cultural or historical studies.
RED/WOLF: TRANSFORMATIONS IN SCREEN ADAPTATIONS OF “RED RIDING HOOD”
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Elizabeth Abele
LET US NOT SPEAK OF THEM
How Cowards and Cowardice Help Explain American (and World) History
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Assoc. Prof. Dr. Chris Walsh
“Take the A Train”: Transgressing the Borders of Race, Gender, and Social Class at the Savoy Ballroom
The Savoy Ballroom, which first opened its doors to dancers and musicians in 1926, was the first ballroom that promised a future of full integration between different groups of people. This future was not only emphasized through the physical space of the ballroom but also by its entertainment culture. It was co-owned by Moe Gale, a Jewish man, and managed by Charles Buchanan, a black man. The dance floor was the first that defied the segregation rules of the time for dancers from various racial backgrounds to mix and dance together, enabling the dance floor to be a liminal place. As such, leads and followers exchanging roles, subverting and grotesquely exaggerating bodily movements of the upper class and ridiculing them by incorporating them into jazz steps showed the audience the fluctuation between genders, roles in dancing, and indirectly, class and race.
Åžen's work illustrated the ways in which the physical space of the Savoy Ballroom, the lyrics of Swing music, and the moves in Swing dancing provided spaces in which the walls Jim Crow Laws built could be transgressed, if not demolished.
Three Travelers, Two Books, One Big Passion: Tales from Turkey or Told in the Coffee-House: Turkish Tales
As part of the Critical Perspectives Seminar Series Assistant Professor Melike Tokay presented her paper entitled "Three Travelers".
Tokay's work examined the Turkish tales three foreign travelers heard at the coffee-houses in Istanbul from a western perspective, while reviews also the personal stories of these travelers. Their lives intersected in Istanbul, at the end of the 19th century, and this unusual meeting united their names on the same pages of two books, published in two continents. They appreciated Turkish humor so much that they decided to publish Turkish tales told in the coffee-houses in English. This is the story of American Cyrus Adler, Scottish Allan Ramsay, and Irish Francis McCullough, meeting at the coffee-houses of the Ottoman Empire.