Speculative Fiction Studies explores and illuminates a genre apart from, and in some ways broader than, the traditional canon of literary fiction. This course aims to explore in what sense the act of “speculation” is central to all literature, but particularly crucial to this genre, which encompasses what we recognize today as fantasy and science fiction as well as alternative histories and futures, utopias and dystopias. Beginning with some of the grandmothers and fathers of speculative fiction and advancing into the contemporary era, students will explore the evolution of this diverse genre, and consider how its themes, symbols, images, and styles act as allegories for the problems of the human condition.

Humans have been interested in creating new (artifical) languages and/or manipulating the existing natural languages for the purposes of contributing to the fiction or human communication, or as a form of pure intellectual practice or linguistic “art.” In this course, students will be provided with the historical and cultural background behind so-called constructed languages (conlangs) as well as an extensive training on language typology and linguistic tools necessary for language construction. Through a critical examination of the structure of the existing conlangs such as Esperanto, Klingon, Elvish and Dothraki in literature and films, students will be guided to construct their own conworlds, speaker profiles and conlangs. The topics that are covered include phoneme inventories, phonological rules, word classes, morphosyntactic structure, language change, dialects and variation, and writing systems.

ELL 216 Creative Non-Fiction teases out the implications of the impetus that prompts an artist to ‘translate real life into real art’. Locating the said stimulus at the core of the production of creative non-fiction, this course introduces students to its major forms, where such ‘translation’ takes place across a spate of media and genres, ranging from documentary theatre to biographical film on the one hand, and from new journalism to the essay on the other. On successful completion of this course a student will be equipped with a conceptual and theoretical skillset whereby to: 1. Identify the basic features of creative non-fiction and how some prominent writers have tackled them. 2. Explain the ways in which creative non-fiction deals with the relationship between what is factual and what is fictional whilst addressing its recipients. 3. Show an awareness of some of the key debates about the nature of non-fiction. 4. Demonstrate a critical understanding of recent developments in the production of non-fiction. 5. Generate comprehensive analytical essays on the representative examples of ‘non-fiction novel’ as part of written exams.

This course aims at examining the levels of dialogue between texts and genres from a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective and it will highlight and study the phenomena of intertextuality and intermediality.

Within the scope of this course, aesthetics that emerged in the fields of playwriting and directing in the 2000s after the break in the 1990s in the theater will be examined. A retrospective view will be brought to the 20th century theater through Gertrude Stein, Antonin Artaud, Samuel Beckett and Heiner Müller in order to create a theoretical ground for the new aesthetics.

The overall aim of this course is to familiarize the students with literary texts from ecocritical perspective as it is clear from the title of the course. With this aim, literary texts that reflect environmental problems will be studied under the light of ecocritical reflections. In doing so, the focus will be on theoretical background of environmental humanities. This course proposes a way to go beyond nature-culture dichotomy by showcasing non-human agentic forces on the same ground with the human on a non-hierarchical scale. Thus, posthumanist and ecocritical perspectives will be highlighted together with an end to delve into literary criticism of nature writing.

Measurement tools used in education and their properties; tools based on traditional approaches: written exams, short-answer questions, true-false type tests, multiple choice tests, matching tests, oral exams; tools for multi-faceted evaluation of the student: observation, interview, performance evaluation, student portfolios, research papers, research projects, peer assessment, self-evaluation, attitude scales; points to be considered in the evaluation of student success; evaluation of learning outcomes and grading.

This course aims to discuss the late Ottoman history between 1789 and 1908. The course will focus on the main economic, political and social events in this period. We will focus on the transformation of the economy, institutional changes, demographic movements and the main political issues. However, besides having a grasp of the main developments in this period, this course also has a major conceptual aim, which is to analyze the changing nature of the Ottoman state. Therefore, the functions of state, the forces behind change, conflicting interests within the Ottoman political, and the evolution of social structures are important issues to be discussed in this class.

This course is basically a survey of European economic history, and aims to introduce the students to the main discussions about European economic development. In this respect, some of the major questions that will be addressed are: was European economic development unique? Can we delineate transitional phases from the middle ages to early modernity, and later to capitalism? What is the relationship between colonialism and industrialization? How can we interpret the first globalization phase in the 19th century, and compare it to the globalization of the late 20th century? Apart from these themes that are discussed chronologically, another aim of the course is to engage in a critical reflection on economic history. Therefore, we have to reflect critically on the following assumptions and questions: Where is Europe? What is the most appropriate unit of analysis to study economic history? Is it possible to delineate the economic realm as separate from political, social, military, or cultural realms? How can we compare European economic history to the economic history of other parts of the world?

This course covers topics in the history of Istanbul in the framework of cultural plurality/diversity in an intersectional perspective through general discussions on the economic, political and social dimensions of urban diversity.

This course aims to familiarize the students with the history of Anatolia in Medieval times. It surveys the history of polities, empires, and peoples that contributed to the making of Anatolian history. In doing this the course adopts a critical and plural perspective to understand and appreciate the political, social and cultural pluralities in the medieval period.

This course introduces the students to the theories behind different kinds of historical research and writing. It focuses on and discusses the most influential of the contemporary historical schools of the twentieth century and their theoretical perspectives, conceptual tools, epistemological assumptions, methods and approaches to sources.

The aim and the purpose of the course: There are different ways to approach specific methodologies for the writing of history. Among these perspectives, the emphasis of this course will be on comparative historical sociology and global history, for a couple of reasons. Even though comparative historical sociology is usually considered to be a subfield of sociology, its general approach, and specific methodologies employed by the historical sociologists are historically grounded. These characteristics allow historians to have a constructive dialogue with another discipline that they generally avoid. Second, the comparative dimension is crucial for historians to think outside of their specializations. This is especially important for the historiographical traditions that attribute some kind of uniqueness to their historical trajectories—both in the West and the rest of the world. Thirdly, comparative historical sociology is interested in very big questions about the dynamics of the modern age, and problematizes many of the feature of the modern world—from the emergence of modern nation-state, to the construction of modern identities; this approach will be immensely helpful for historians to avoid ahistorical approaches and narratives. Finally, even though it is taken for granted that we have been living in a globalized world, thinking history globally requires a good deal of critical reflection, and concomitantly, the field of global history has produced specific approaches and methodologies. Historians should have a good understanding of this diversity.

This course will stress political and intellectual developments and cover milestones like the First Constitutional Period, the Revolution of 1908, the establishment of the Unionist authoritarian regime and the Tripolitan, Balkan and first World Wars.

This course will focus on political and intellectual developments during the years of the early Republican period, the transition to a multi-party democracy, the transformations after the coup d'état of 1960 and the period after the 1980 coup d'état through case studies.

This course surveys the history and agency of nonhuman animals in the making of the modern world history. It investigates the interactions between nonhuman animals, humans, and the environment from a global perspective. The course aims to challenge human exclusivism by offering the students a diverse set of readings from different disciplines and perspectives. It further seeks to introduce the students to major studies, names, and topics of animal history and studies and to familiarize them with the theoretical and methodological challenges of the field.

This course explores various methodological and theoretical approaches to gender in history through a comparative outlook. The course concentrates on major topics in gender history over a broad range of geographical and temporal specificities. Topics include gender theory, categories of “women” and gender in historical analysis; differences and convergences of gender and its analysis in various historical periods; multiple meanings of masculinities, femininities and queer; legal regulations and the “gender” of law; various forms of gendered power such as family, medicine, body, violence; and finally, agency and subjectivity of gendered subjects in different historical settings.

This course is an online course, offered as an elective in the Department of International Relations, open to all undergraduate and international exchange students. The aim is to familiarize the students with the filmography on the topic of migration and minorities, thereby offering an analytical angle into the visual representations of human variety and mobility in and around Turkey. Selected short and feature films will be investigated in terms of the issues they tackle, the perspectives they offer to these issues, their representative power, their cinematographic qualities, the theoretical questions they raise in social science literature, and the policy recommendations they may bring to the complicated issues of minorities and migration in the region. The movies will be taken up as first steps into further explorations of multiple historical and contemporary dimensions surrounding the selected issues. Students are expected to do the recommended readings, engage in literature review and other online activities around weekly assignments following the viewing of the movies.

Global historical sociology is a relatively new field that defines a subfield within the social sciences. It is situated at the intersection of sociology, history, and IR. It is an invitation to challenge both methodological nationalisms and the over emphasis on Europe and the West as the dominant preoccupation of theoretical thinking. Put differently, global historical sociology invites us to rethink the links between the social sites classified as the “foreign” and the “domestic,” the “East” and the “West,” “metropole,” and “colony”. The overall aim of global historical sociology is to analyze international, transnational, and global entanglements within which social processes are embedded. This course aims to give a general perspective about this new subfield, by specifically focusing on the making of states, capitalism, classes, and revolutions. Furthermore, this course tackles the question of incorporating the historical sociology of the Ottoman Empire with global historical sociology.

This course aims at the analysis of the Eurasianism that is one of the terms discussed in contemporary World and Turkish politics within the framework of definitions and discussions on region and regionalism. Within this framework, Russia, Balkan, Caucasian and Central Asian countries will be analysed in the transition processes of modern period with regard to state building, state-capital relations, state-society relations and foreign policy.

This course approaches globalisation with a historical perspective and analyses the redefinitions of the State and the role of the Capital. The discussions on State are illustrated in the examples of USA, Russian Federation and Republic of Turkey. The course also focuses on the energy politics within globalisation and discusses it in the examples of Caspian region and Central Asia. It is finalised with a care given to ecology, particularly on renewable energy and food agriculture.

This course is an introduction to the fundamental concepts, terminology and methodological principles of the Humanities. It main purpose is to enhance critical thinking skills of the students. The course surveys Western culture and civilization from antiquity to the Middle Ages as shaped by the political, social and economic conditions of the times. The literary, artistic, architectural and musical achievements of each period are explored in detail. Written, visual and auditory materials supplement the course.

This course is an introduction to the fundamental concepts, terminology and methodological principles of the Humanities. Its main purpose is to enhance critical thinking skills of the students. The course surveys Western culture and civilization from the later Middle Ages to the WWII and post-world wars era as shaped by the political, social and economic conditions of the times. The literary, artistic, architectural and musical achievements of each period are explored in detail. Written, visual and auditory materials supplement the course.

This course focuses on prominent literary texts of European literature in 20th century, beginning with turn-of-the-century writers. Apart from literary styles, the relationship of these texts to 19th and 20th European history, culture, and literary movements will be studied.

The course will be an examination of the short story genre, its development, its culture and theory. Students will read examples of the genre, from many of its significant incarnations in world literary history, and discuss their specific historical context. The course aims to teach students about short literary forms and the development of the genre, as well as providing a comparative understanding regarding its modes of production and reception.

This course is a chronological survey of Western dramatic literature from the ancient Greeks to the 19th century.

This course is a survey of 20th century dramatic literature from Ibsen to Beckett.

Starting out from diverse literary texts of a historical period, the course is directed at understanding history through literature. The period covered in the course comprises the 19th century.

Translation is central to comparative literature, a field that has long displayed a proclivity for crossing borders. This course includes a range of readings in translation studies, with an emphasis on the cultural function of translation and the role of the translator in cross-cultural communication. Together with theoretical texts, we will read fiction and essays that treat issues such as migration, memory, and nation formation. The essays in translation studies will help us form the questions in our approach to the fiction we read in this class.

In this course we read and discuss literature that deals in different ways with colonial and postcolonial history. Through an exploration of this fiction we seek to understand the primary concerns of postcolonial textual analysis, its key concepts and a number of the field’s contemporary debates, including questions of race, migration, language, gender, hybridization, and power.