Erdağ Göknar is Associate Professor of Turkish in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University and former director of the Duke Middle East Studies Center. He is a scholar of literary and cultural studies and an award-winning translator whose research and publications focus on intersections of literature and politics in Turkey and the Middle East; specifically, on late Ottoman legacies in contemporary Turkish fiction, historiography, and popular culture.
He is the recipient of two NEA literature fellowships (translation), two Fulbright awards, and residential fellowships at the National Humanities Center and the Stanford Humanities Center.
His books include a monograph entitled Orhan Pamuk, Secularism and Blasphemy: The Politics of the Turkish Novel (Routledge, 2013); a co-edited volume, Mediterranean Passages: Readings from Dido to Derrida (UNC Press, 2008); and English-language translations of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s A Mind at Peace (Archipelago Books, 2011); Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red (Knopf, 2010; 2001) and Atiq Rahimi’s Earth and Ashes (Harcourt, 2002). His current project focuses on cosmopolitanism, political violence and the Allied occupation of Istanbul after WWI.
| Office Location: | 2204 Erwin Road, Durham, NC 27708 |
| Email Address: | |
| Web Page: | http://www.duke.edu/web/aall/~goknar |
Teaching (Spring 2024):
| Ph.D. | University of Washington | 2004 |
| M.A. | University of Washington | 1998 |
| MFA | Univ. of Oregon | 1994 |
| B.A. | University of Michigan, Ann Arbor | 1988 |
Current projects: Between Orient and Nation: The Modern Turkish Novel and Orhan Pamuk (in-progress), Colonial Encounter and Cultural Revolution: Narrative Identities of Ottoman Modernism and Turkism (in-progress), A Mind at Peace (translation of Tanpinar novel), Archipelago Books, NY, 2008, Mediterranean Passages from Dido to Derrida, co-editor, UNC Press, 2008
Primary focus on the legacies of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkist cultural revolution upon modern Turkey. Secondary focus on cultural translation and representations of Turks and Muslims, including regional understandings of Turkey and Islam in the Middle East and Eurasia. Theoretical focus on literature, colonialism, modernism, translation, and identity.