Scholars@Duke
Erdag Göknar

Erdag Göknar

Associate Professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Asian & Middle Eastern Studies
goknar@duke.edu
2204 Erwin Road, Rm. 234, Box 90414, Durham, NC 27708-0414
2204 Erwin Road, Durham, NC 27708
Office hours Fridays, 1-3 PM  

Selected Publications

The postsecular imaginaries of Orhan Pamuk’s novels

Journal Article Literature & Theology · December 10, 2024 AbstractThis article argues that Orhan Pamuk’s literary innovations bring formations of religion and secularism separated by ideologies of Turkish modernization and cultural revolution into productive parity ... Full text Cite

"The Light of the Bosphorus: Photography in Orhan Pamuk's 'Balkon'"

Other Los Angeles Review of Books · May 19, 2019 ORHAN PAMUK’S PHOTOGRAPHS emerge from a specific and recurring moment. As much as they capture subtle aspects of Istanbul geography in and around the iconic confluence of the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn, they also reveal the moments when the writer stops ... Link to item Cite

Yasak/Banned from Sultan Abdülhamid II to President Erdoğan

Journal Article Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association · 2018 Cite

Yasak/Banned from Sultan Abdülhamid II to President Erdoğan

Journal Article Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association · 2018 Cite

"A Turkish Woman in the Oedipus Complex: Orhan Pamuk's 'The Red-Haired Woman'"

Other · August 22, 2017 The two dominant and competing myths come from ancient Greece and Persia (Greece and Iran today are Turkey’s Western and Eastern neighbors): the Oedipal myth from Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, where son unknowingly kills father, and the legend of Rostam and Sohr ... Link to item Cite

Nomadologies

Book · April 11, 2017 Moments lived between Turkey and America come together in this debut collection by the award-winning translator of Orhan Pamuk. ... Cite

"A Nomad Between Worlds: Mohed Altrad's _Badawi_"

Other Los Angeles Review of Books · September 6, 2016 Link to item Cite

Reading Occupied Istanbul: Turkish Subject-Formation from Historical Trauma to Literary Trope

Journal Article Culture, Theory and Critique · September 2, 2014 Abstract: The Allied occupation of Istanbul is a little-known historical event outside of Turkey and the Middle East. European powers occupied Istanbul between 1918 and 1923 to enforce the partition of the Ottoman Empire after WWI in the construction of th ... Full text Cite

Orhan Pamuk, secularism and blasphemy: The politics of the Turkish novel

Book · January 1, 2013 Orhan Pamuk, Secularism and Blasphemy is the first critical study of all of Pamuk’s novels, including the early untranslated work. ... Full text Cite

Turkish-islamic feminism confronts national patriarchy: Halide Edib's divided self

Journal Article Journal of Middle East Women's Studies · January 1, 2013 This essay compares and contrasts Turkish author Halide Edib's novel The Shirt of Flame (Duffield & Company, 1921) to the second volume of her memoirs, The Turkish Ordeal (The Century Company, 1928). Both texts have female protagonists and parallel plots a ... Full text Cite

"Occulted Texts: Pamuk’s Untranslated Novels"

Chapter · 2012 Global Perspectives on Orhan Pamuk is an interdisciplinary collection of essays that explores Pamuk’s multifaceted approach to ordinary Turkish life. The contributors of this volume come from an array of international perspectives that place the reading of ... Cite

A Mind at Peace

Book · March 22, 2011 A Mind at Peace, originally published in 1949 is a magnum opus, a Turkish Ulysses and a lyrical homage to Istanbul. ... Cite

"The White Castle" and the Ottoman Legacy

Journal Article Journal of Turkish Literature · January 2011 Cite

Earth and Ashes

Book · August 10, 2010 Atiq Rahimi, whose reputation for writing war stories of immense drama and intimacy began with this, his first novel, has managed to condense centuries of Afghan history into a short tale of three very different generations. ... Cite

My Name Is Red

Book · 2010 Their task: to illuminate the work in the European style. ... Cite

"From Steppe to Sea: The Blue Anatolia Literary Movement"

Journal Article Turkish Studies Journal Special Issue Festschrift for Walter Andrews · 2010 Cite

Mediterranean passages readings from Dido to Derrida

Book · October 2008 The Mediterranean is the meeting point of three continents-Asia, Africa, and Europe-as well as three major monotheistic religions-Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. ... Cite

"The Novel in Turkish: From Narrative Tradition to Nobel Prize"

Other · 2008 Turkey’s modern history has been shaped by its society and its institutions. In this fourth volume of The Cambridge History of Turkey a team of some of the most distinguished scholars of modern Turkey have come together to explore the interaction between t ... Cite

"Orhan Pamuk and the ’Ottoman’ Theme"

Journal Article World Literature Today · November 2006 Cite

"The Novel in Turkish: From Narrative Tradition to Nobel Prize"

Chapter Turkey’s modern history has been shaped by its society and its institutions. In this fourth volume of The Cambridge History of Turkey a team of some of the most distinguished scholars of modern Turkey have come together to explore the interaction between t ... Cite

The AKP's Rhetoric of Rule in Turkey: Political Melodramas of Conspiracy from "Ergenekon" to "Mastermind"

Chapter In 2008 the Turkish Constitutional Court was one vote shy of banning the ruling AKP for “anti-secular activity.” In response, the AKP began articulating a series of political conspiracy narratives, amplified through the media. Blurring the line between rep ... Open Access Link to item Cite