Women and Turkish Shakespeares (Edited Volume)

Contact email: turkishshakespeares@gmail.com 

Call for Chapters

Turkey has a long tradition of reading, translating and staging William Shakespeare’s plays as part of the country’s modernisation process. Yet, this long tradition has remained relatively obscure for the majority of both Turkish and non-Turkish academic and non-academic circles.

The year 2023 not only marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio, but also the 100th anniversaries of both the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the first legal performance of female Turkish performers of Shakespeare’s plays in Turkey. To celebrate this tripartite anniversary, the Turkish Shakespeares Project and the Shakespeare in Turkey Festival have joined forces to document and celebrate past and present female performers, directors, translators, and academics, who have played an important role in the development of the appreciation of Shakespeare in Turkey.

We are looking forward to receiving abstracts for 7,000 word essays (including Bibliography) that document and critically engage with how certain female figures have been influential in the development of Shakespeare productions and studies in Turkey.

Contributors are invited on any of the following aspects:

• Turkish female performers, directors, translators, and/or academics
• Representation of women in Turkish Shakespeares on screen or on stage
• Analyses of cross-dressing
• Analyses of gender empowerment
• Analyses of gender equality and gender-discrimination
• Analyses of gender-based violence
• Gender Studies and Turkish Shakespeares
• Urban and rural perspectives and representations of Turkish Shakespeares
• Challenges of researching women and Turkish Shakespeares
  • Theatre History
  • Female workforce
  • Translational policies
  • Academia
  • Intersections of class, gender, race, ecology, posthuman studies, disability studies

Figures that can be analysed may include, but are by no means restricted to, the following  incomprehensive list of female figures:

• female performers: Merope Kantarcıyan, Bediha Muvahhit, Cahide Sonku, Neyyire Neyir, Nevin Akkaya, Yıldız Kenter, Tijen Par, Nur Sabuncu, Ayla Algan, Nedret Güvenç, Beyhan Saran, Fatma Girik, Ayten Gökçer, Tomris İncer, Celile Toyon, Işık Yenersu, Sermin Hümeriç, Aliye Uzunatağan, Sumru Yavrucuk, Zerrin Tekindor, Demet Evgar, Sezin Akbaşoğulları, Fulya Koçak, Ayşe Muazzez Lutas Kurtoğlu, Nermin Sarova, Tülay Bursa, Tülay Günal, Melek Ökte, Çiğdem Selışık Onat, Nazlı Polattaş, Zeynep Ekin Öner, Emel Tunçses, Şeref Çokşeker, Gülenay Kalkan, Şerif Sezer, Ayda Aksel, Rüçhan Çalışkur, Tilbe Saran, Zeynep Eronat, Devrim Yakut, İpek Çeken, Hatice Aslan, Evrim Alasya, Tülay Günal, Gaye Turgut Evin, Özge Özder, Nazan Kesal, Elvin Beşikçioğlu, Zuhal Gencer, Lale Başar, Şirin Kılavuz, Zeynep Özyağcılar, Akasya Asıltürkmen, Bennu Yıldırımlar,
• female directors: Müge Gürman, Ayşe Emel Mesci, Nesrin Kazankaya, Çağ Çalışkur, Nihal Koldaş, Zerrin Akdenizli, Pelin Esmer
• female translators: Halide Edip Adıvar, Zeynep Avcı, Emine Ayhan, Kamurân (Günseli) Şerif, Seniha Bedri Göknil, Seniha Sami, Belkıs Boyar, Nuran Devres, Mina Urgan
• female academics: Halide Edip Adıvar, Mina Urgan, Hadiye Sayron, Süheyla Artemel, Ayşegül Yüksel, İnci Enginün, Oya Başak, Cevza Sevgen, A. Deniz Bozer, Necla Çıkıgil

Essays might discuss any of these female figures either as groups from a macro perspective (looking at chronological, spatial, class, gender, racial, linguistic, translational, ecological, and posthuman continuities or discontinuities) or from a micro perspective and focus on individual female figures (but papers should critically engage with these figures without reducing them to biographical entries). Papers can also engage with how Shakespeare’s works have been localised and (re)interpreted in various media adaptations.

Please send a 250-word abstract, a short bio, and your recent CV to Turkish Shakespeares (turkishshakespeares@gmail.com) before the 31st of March 2024.

We have already contacted two major academic publishers which have shown great interest in the volume.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any further queries. We are looking forward to receiving your proposals.

The Editors

Evrim Doğan Adanur is Associate Professor Doctor at Fenerbahçe University, Turkey. She examines a range of different approaches to Shakespeare and early modern drama. She is a graduate of Hacettepe University (Department of English Language and Literature, BA) and American University, Washington, DC (Department of Literature, MA). She received her PhD degree from Ankara University. She is currently the Head of the Department of English Language and Literature at Fenerbahçe University.

Kübra Vural Özbey is an  Assistant Professor Doctor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University, Muğla, Turkey. She received her BA in 2013 and MA in 2015 from the Department of English Language and Literature at Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey. She completed her doctorate degree in 2021 in the same department with her dissertation entitled “Liminality in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Hamlet and Troilus and Cressida.” She also conducted her Ph.D. research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a Fulbright grantee from January 2021 to October 2021. Her research interests are Shakespeare, Irish drama, literary theories, and criticism.

İlker Özçelik is an Assistant Professor Doctor in the English Language and Literature Department at Süleyman Demirel University, Turkey. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he is the regional editor of the open-access Global Shakespeares Video and Performance Archive. At the University of Leicester’s School of English, he is a visiting fellow. His research splits into two distinct but nonetheless related strands: textual studies, especially digital text and digital humanities, and contemporary Shakespearean performance. His research has been funded by the European Commission, the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, The Turkish Council of Higher Education, the Association for Logic, Language and Information (FoLLI), the International Shakespeare Association, and other agencies. He is co-general editor of Suleyman Demirel University’s Journal of Social Sciences and has guest-edited a number of journal issues. He chaired the first and second Shakespeare festivals in Turkey, and the International Conference on English Language, Literature, and Linguistics (ICELLL) with Noam Chomsky as keynote speaker. He has appeared on the BBC Radio Leicester programme ‘Mid-morning show”. He has also been interviewed on TRT World, TRT Radio, and Anadolu Agency.

Murat Öğütcü is an Associate Professor Doctor in the English Language and Literature Department at Adıyaman University, Turkey. He received his PhD degree from the Department of English Language and Literature at Hacettepe University, Turkey, in 2016. From August 2012 to January 2013, he was a visiting scholar at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is currently working at Adıyaman University, Turkey. He is the General Editor of the “Turkish Shakespeares” Project which aims to introduce texts, productions and research on Turkish Shakespeares to a broader international audience of students, teachers, and researchers. He is also a researcher at the AHRC-funded “Medieval and Early Modern Orients” project which aims to contribute to our understanding of the medieval and early modern encounters between England and the Islamic Worlds. He is among the regional editors of the Global Shakespeares Project and the World Shakespeare Bibliography. He is co-editor of Materializing the East in Early Modern English Drama (Bloomsbury, 2023). He has written book chapters and articles on his research interests, including early modern studies, Shakespeare, and cultural studies.