Şima İmşir | Koç University (original) (raw)

Books by Şima İmşir

Health, Literature and Women in Twentieth-Century Turkey: Bodies of Exception, 2023

Health, Literature and Women in Twentieth-Century Turkey offers readers fresh insight into Turkis... more Health, Literature and Women in Twentieth-Century Turkey offers readers fresh insight into Turkish modernity and its discourse on health, what it excludes and how these potentialities manifest themselves in women’s fiction to shape the imagination of the period. Starting from the nineteenth century, health gradually became a focal topic in relation to the future of the empire, and later the Republic. Examining representations of health and illness in nationalist romances, melodramas and modernist works, this book will explore diseases such as syphilis, tuberculosis and cancer, and their representation in the literary imagination as a tool to discuss anxieties over cultural transformation. This book places Turkish literature in the field of health humanities and identifies the discourse on health as a key component in the making of the Turkish nation-building ideology. By focusing on the place of health and illness in canonical and non-canonised fiction, it opens a new field in Turkish literary studies.

Articles by Şima İmşir

Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2021

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire began to use positivism and mate... more In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire began to use positivism and materialism to socially regulate and reform the empire, and Charles Darwin, Ludwig Büchner and Claude Bernard were among the names often cited and translated to engineer a new Ottoman society. Émile Zola became a hotly debated figure both for his choice of subjects, and for his view of society as a patient in need of healing. Dedicated to the “soul” of Zola, Halide Edib’s novel Mev’ut Hüküm (The promised verdict; 1917–18) narrates the ill-fated romance between Sara, suffering from syphilis, and her doctor, Kasım Şinasi. This article looks at how European notions of determinism and social Darwinism shaped late Ottoman literature and its role in social engineering. Edib’s combination of naturalism and tragedy reflects the tension between materialism and spiritualism in contemporary debates; she uses both trends of thought to criticize patriarchal logic that vilifies and victimizes women.

Dictionary of Literary Biography 379 Turkish Novelists Since 1960 Second Series, 2016

Duvar Dergisi, vol.28 (2016).

Dictionary of Literary Biography 379 Turkish Novelists Since 1960 Second Series, 2016

Women of the Middle East

The Turkish literature canon routinely excludes the work of the many women writers who have contr... more The Turkish literature canon routinely excludes the work of the many women writers who have contributed vivid insights into the evolving Turkish society, within the Ottoman Empire and as a republic. The Women Writers of Turkey Project has addressed this, cataloguing the works and lives of these authors, and highlighting the history of women’s experience in Turkey. Following the footsteps of three women writers, Fatma Aliye, Halide Edip Adivar and Adalet Agaoglu, the paper presents the challenges of transgressing the accepted limits of valuable knowledge, and demonstrates how the lives of Turkish women have been documented in Turkish literature.

This article was originally written for Gender Studies in the Age of Globalization conference, held by Spiru Haret University in 2011. After being published as part of the conference proceedings, the article was re-published by Journal of Research in Gender Studies in 2011. In 2015, Routledge requested to publish it, this time in an edited volume, entitled Women of the Middle East (ed. Fatma Muge Gocek).

Monsters in Society: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, 2014

Gothic literature has always been affected by the mainstream thought of the day, reflecting the c... more Gothic literature has always been affected by the mainstream thought of the day, reflecting the changing eras from the reason-centred world of the Enlightenment to the political, historical and social conditions of today. Kerime Nadir, a best-selling writer of romantic novels, has re-written Bram Stoker’s Dracula as Dehşet Gecesi (The Night of Terror), the first example of gothic literature by a Turkish woman.
She turns Count Dracula into a female vampire, Princess Ruzihayal, and Transylvania into Hakkari, one of South-East Turkey’s most combustible places. Nadir’s monster resides on the Cilo Mountain which is home to the “rootless bandits” in her text and a home to the Kurdish conflict in Turkey’s political reality. When the looks of her “bandits” are described in detail, these residents of the mountain become even scarier than Nadir’s female Dracula. While it is possible to read these horror images as the reflections of collective unconscious, the nature of her female characters allows us to understand the gender perception of her time. Princess Ruzihayal is an uncannily beautiful and brave femme fatale who happens to be the villain of the book, while the hero’s fiancé is portrayed as a natural,
fragile, innocent beauty. The hero must control his lust for the princess and return to his beloved. This paper has two dimensions: Political and Gender-Centred. I discuss how Kerime Nadir’s book fits within the pattern of gothic literature in an
attempt to demonstrate gothic literature as a mirror to the subconscious of changing history and culture, reflecting the worries of the people.

Bu çalışmada Aslı Erdoğan’ın Kabuk Adam ve Sylvia Plath’in Sırça Fanus romanlarında kimlik proble... more Bu çalışmada Aslı Erdoğan’ın Kabuk Adam ve Sylvia Plath’in Sırça Fanus romanlarında kimlik problemi irdelenmiş, kimlikleri yıkıma doğru evrilen ana karakterlerin abjeksiyonla ilişkisi, Julia Kristeva’nın abjeksiyon teorisi çerçevesinde tartışılmıştır. On dokuz yaşında New York’ta prestijli bir staj olanağı kazanan, aldığı eğitim ve idealleriyle toplumsal cinsiyet baskısı arasında bocalayarak geleceğini çizmeye çalışan Esther Greenwood ile kabul edildiği prestijli fizik okulları ve araştırma laboratuarlarında kendisini kıstırılmış hisseden Kabuk Adam’ın anlatıcısının öznelliklerini adım adım yıkışları takip edilmiştir. Çalışma boyunca Esther Greenwood’un yaşadığı kriz bir rol krizi olarak ele alınmış ve Kabuk Adam’ın anlatıcısının klostrofobi hissiyle karşılaştırmalı olarak tartışılarak, iki kahramanın farklı yöntemlerle abjeksiyona kaçışları izlenmiştir. İki metinde de görülen intihar, hastalık, suç ve gece gibi temalar öznenin özgürlük mücadelesi açısından çözümlenmiştir.

ABJECTION AS AN ESCAPE POINT: THE PROBLEMATIZATION OF IDENTITY IN THE BELL JAR AND THE SHELL MAN

This paper problematizes identity in Aslı Erdoğan’s The Shell Man and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar in relation to Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection. In The Bell Jar, the destruction of “I” is followed through the stories of Esther Greenwood, a nineteen year old girl who receives a prestigious prize in New York and is trapped between her ideals as a successful woman and the gender roles prescribed by society. Similarly, the narrator of The Shell Man is a twenty year old girl who feels alienated amidst prestigious physics schools and laboratories. Within the paper, Esther Greenwood’s “role crisis” and The Shell Man’s narrator’s claustrophobia are discussed from a comparative perspective, with abjection presented as a point of escape. The themes of suicide, illness, crime and night are analysed in relation to the struggle for freedom in both texts.

Edited Books by Şima İmşir

Gaflet: Modern Türkçe Edebiyatın Cinsiyetçi Sinir Uçları, 2019

Turkish Literature as World Literature, 2020

Turkish Literature as World Literature, 2021

Thinking about a volume on “Turkish literature as world literature” introduces some seemingly sim... more Thinking about a volume on “Turkish literature as world literature” introduces some seemingly simple questions. What is “Turkish Literature as world literature?” Is not Turkish literature naturally a world literature? The qualification created by the addition of the preposition “as” is suggestive of a difference between Turkish literature on its own and Turkish literature within a collective proposition. Since the materials that constitute Turkish literature do not change with or without the “as,” this preposition seems to refer to a qualification toward not Turkish literature but what world literature is in its relation to national literary traditions. Accordingly, the singular within the collective comes into focus and both gain reciprocal value and meaning in association with one another. The question to be asked then is: what is this “world literature” that changes the perception of a national literature and is itself redefined when they interact? What is this third literary body that emerges out of the convergence of the singular and the collective spheres by means of an “as”? What is in a preposition?

by Cimen Gunay-Erkol, Günil Özlem Ayaydın Cebe, Reyhan Tutumlu, Şima İmşir, Prof. Dr. Ali Tilbe, esra dicle, S. Elif Aksoy, Fatma Damak, Egem Atik, Hatice Övgü Tüzün, Başak Deniz Özdoğan, and Mediha Göbenli

by Cimen Gunay-Erkol, Papatya Alkan Genca, Petra de Bruijn, Ayse Naz Bulamur, Burcu Karahan, Şima İmşir, Alev Önder, Yan Overfield Shaw, ali serdar, Ayten Sonmez, Leyla Şimşek Rathke, Gizem Tongo, Sevinç Türkkan, Rosita D'Amora, and S. Elif Aksoy

Talks by Şima İmşir

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, scientific world-views were espoused by many Ottoma... more In the latter half of the nineteenth century, scientific world-views were espoused by many Ottoman intellectuals who theorised a new Ottoman society based upon the values of positivism. Following the foundation of the modern Turkish Republic, these perspectives evolved into discourses on the “fit nation”. In particular, the work of German materialist Ludwig Buchner, French physiologist Claude Bernard and later, English naturalist and geologist Charles Darwin, among many others, became hotly debated within the Ottoman and Republican intellectual milieu as key scientific and positivist ideas through which society could be analysed and transformed. As the hereditary qualities of the population became a matter of concern, Social Darwinist discourse inevitably found its representation in works of literature from melodramas of Kerime Nadir to Halide Edib’s national romances. Specifically in Halide Edib’s works, the sick heroines of early works are replaced with definitively healthy and fit heroines in her later works. In this presentation, I will focus on her Mevud Hüküm, a novel Halide Edib dedicates to “the soul of Emile Zola”, as a transitional text which focuses on the ills of society; more particularly alcoholism, hereditary madness and venereal diseases. This paper argues that, on the one hand, Halide Edib’s text reflects the deterministic socio-medical discourse of the Second Constitutional Era through an idealist doctor Kasım Şinasi; and on the other hand, the objective mind of a scientist is challenged through Kasım Şinasi’s love for syphilitic Sara, as the text is transformed into an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Othello.

Starting in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, attempts at modernization in Turkey inter... more Starting in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, attempts at modernization in Turkey intertwined with attempts to create a centralized system of health monitoring, owing to concerns over the population and the strength of the army. By the turn of the century, Western Europe's discourse on hereditary determinism and degeneration as a threat to the well-being of society had begun to influence the approach to health and illness in the Ottoman Empire, with syphilis, alcoholism and madness not only seen as individual problems but also as threats to the whole of society.

Halide Edib's Mevud Hüküm (1917-1918) portrays a love story between syphilitic Sara and Kasım Şinasi, an idealist doctor whose scientific observations on society and social types dominate the narrative. Halide Edib dedicates this novel to "Emile Zola's soul" and through the observant eyes of Kasım Şinasi, the text focuses on the ills of society; more particularly alcoholism, hereditary madness and venereal diseases. This paper argues that on the one hand Halide Edib's text reflects the deterministic socio-medical discourse of the Second Constitutional Era through Kasım Şinasi; on the other hand it acts as an "experimentalist" text in line with Emile Zola's Experimental Novel: the objective mind of a scientist challenged by humane desires through Kasım Şinasi's love for Sara. As Kasım Şinasi loses his objectivity and sense of reality, the determinism of the novel is blurred, and it is transformed into an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Othello. The text is hybridized both as a space of intercultural encounter and as a fusion of tragedy and naturalism. This paper reads the end of the novel where Sara does not die due to her poor hereditary qualities, but is killed by Kasım Şinasi in a fit of jealousy as the tragedy of the scientific man, and suggest that the cross-genreness of Mevud Hüküm challenges deterministic medical authority.

Attempts to establish centralized health monitoring intertwined with attempts to modernize the Ot... more Attempts to establish centralized health monitoring intertwined with attempts to modernize the Ottoman Empire, starting from roughly the first quarter of the 19th century. With the foundation of the Turkish republic, the health of the nation became an official object of concern, and the scientific discourse on the well-being of the nation and ideology that defined the new Turkey as one that is young, progressive, healthy and fit worked hand in hand in describing health as a definitive characteristic of the modern Turkish citizen while attributing ill-health to the Sick Man of Europe, the Ottoman Empire. As the subjects of the empire were transformed to citizens of a modern and "European" republic, their bodies "fattened" with meaning and protecting one's health came to be defined as the primary duty of a citizen.

In Melodramatic Imagination, Peter Brooks defines melodramas as "social glues" that are the products of post-revolutionary and post-sacred world where they function to create a "moral occult" by depicting bodies "seized with meaning." Gaining a platform and popularity simultaneously with the modernization project since the mid-19th century in the Ottoman Empire, melodramas responded to reforms first on stage, then in movies and in sentimental novels where the excessively expressive bodies challenged the limits of the language. Health and sickness became imbued with new meaning. In this presentation, through one of the most popular sentimental novels in the history of Turkish literature, Kerime Nadir's Hıçkırık (1938), where a tubercular heroine loses her life energy while the hero grows into a man finally to become a healthy fit and heroic soldier, I will discuss, as Roberto Esposito puts it in his Bios, "the spiritualization of zoe and the biologization of the spirit."

In the early 20th century the Ottoman Empire was doomed and the Turkish Republic was founded from... more In the early 20th century the Ottoman Empire was doomed and the Turkish Republic was founded from the ashes of "the sick man of Europe." While the masses were transformed from being the subjects of an empire to the citizens of a republic, the meanings of the individuals' bodies changed drastically. People were now defined as members of a nation and the state demanded that they devote their existence to the well-being of the nation. As opposed to the sick and degenerate body of the empire, the new Turkish Republic was young, healthy and energetic and so its citizens should have been the same. The official publications of the government declared bodies as the foremost interest of the nation and demanded the citizens to take care of their health as a precondition of being ideal Turkish citizens. Medical professionals published articles on the importance of choosing a healthy spouse. The Sturdy Child magazine started photography competitions to choose the sturdiest Turkish child and women's bodies were especially treasured as they were the ones to guarantee the upbringing of the healthy future generations. My research looks at how women writers in Turkey wrote about illness in an atmosphere where an ideal citizen was defined as fit, healthy and sturdy. In this paper, taking a best-selling melodrama, Kerime Nadir's Hıçkırık (1938) as an example, I will examine the relationship between bodies and state in the Turkish modernization project.

The author of popular romances Kerime Nadir published Hıçkırık (Weeping), a gothic melodrama abou... more The author of popular romances Kerime Nadir published Hıçkırık (Weeping), a gothic melodrama about a love story between a young soldier and a tubercular woman, in 1938 in Turkey, ten years after the alphabet reform that Latinized the Turkish alphabet. Despite the negative impact of the alphabet change on book and newspaper sales, Hıçkırık attained national popularity. This was also the period when the newly founded Turkish republic was reviving itself after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. In my paper, I will explore the reasons that underlie the popularity of Nadir’s work and read Hıçkırık as a text that symbolizes the fears and needs of women in a patriarchal society whose hegemonic masculinity was deeply wounded by the loss of the Ottoman Empire and therefore had to raise its masculinity as if raising a young boy.
Nadir’s melodramas depicted tragic love stories of upper class Istanbul elites who lead European lifestyles with European style parties and outfits, and they taught the masses how to be modern in a period when the Turkish state worked hand in hand with social and positive sciences in order to prove that Turkish people were “naturally” European and demanded its citizens to lead European style modern lives. In doing so, from their clothing to their musical taste they were under close scrutiny. However I argue that Hıçkırık also points at a masculinity crisis that was triggered by the loss of the empire. Being a bildungsroman, this is the story of the hero’s growth from childhood into manhood with the help of the heroine. As the hero gets closer to becoming “a man”, the tubercular heroine wastes all of her life energy and is physically consumed by the hero’s desires. In other words, Hıçkırık is not a text that looks at the future but mourns for what is lost, since the revivifying of the hero’s masculinity will be at the cost of heroine’s life.

Health, Literature and Women in Twentieth-Century Turkey: Bodies of Exception, 2023

Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2021

Dictionary of Literary Biography 379 Turkish Novelists Since 1960 Second Series, 2016

Duvar Dergisi, vol.28 (2016).

Dictionary of Literary Biography 379 Turkish Novelists Since 1960 Second Series, 2016

Women of the Middle East

Monsters in Society: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, 2014

ABJECTION AS AN ESCAPE POINT: THE PROBLEMATIZATION OF IDENTITY IN THE BELL JAR AND THE SHELL MAN

Gaflet: Modern Türkçe Edebiyatın Cinsiyetçi Sinir Uçları, 2019

Turkish Literature as World Literature, 2020

Turkish Literature as World Literature, 2021

In 1930s, the newly founded Republic of Turkey was developing its ideology of modernity. The new ... more In 1930s, the newly founded Republic of Turkey was developing its ideology of modernity. The new ideology defined ideal Turkish citizens as modern, fashionable, high-cultured, sporty and healthy. To guarantee the welfare of the social body, the new government launched a war against contagious and venereal diseases. Protecting one’s own body was promoted as the first requirement of a good citizen by the medical establishment of the time. Citizens should not only be careful to remain healthy, but they should also avoid hiring people with diseases as maids, cooks, servants, or nannies. The clear definition of what/who constituted “untouchable” bodies was not only limited to occupational relations. In 1933, a Health Almanac was published under the editorship of a psychiatrist, Mazhar Osman. In the part of the book dealing with suggested behaviors, he states that citizens should not marry “degenerate” people who had “theft, murder, immorality and filthy diseases in their ancestry.” The untouchables were thus not only people with diseases, but also those with bad characters or ancestors with bad health or moral histories. In this paper, I propose to analyze Mazhar Osman’s Health Almanac and discuss the politics behind the “untouchable bodies” in Turkish Republic of the 1930s.

Sylvia Plath has been considered as one of the exemplary poets of confessional poetry which deriv... more Sylvia Plath has been considered as one of the exemplary poets of confessional poetry which derives its roots from the personal experiences of the poet. In her works, Plath criticised gender-centred society and reflected the dark atmosphere of 1950s and 1960s, decades which covered an on-going cold war and the aftermath of a world war. Nilgün Marmara, a young Turkish poet who tragically ended her life in 1987 at the age of 29, was deeply affected by Plath’s poetry and analysed Plath’s poems in her academic works. She produced her own poems in 1980s in a decade which covered a coup d’état and strong social pressure. Both poets experienced the pressures of gender-centred society and the oppressive political atmosphere in their daily lives and reflected their experiences in their poetry. The paper investigates the two poets’ textual partnership through confessional poetry that passes beyond the limits of nation and time.

Harper Lee - Tespih Ağacının Gölgesinde

Ramona Mihăilă, Efstratia Oktapoda, Nancy Honicker (eds.), 10 vols., Addleton Academic Publishers... more Ramona Mihăilă, Efstratia Oktapoda, Nancy Honicker (eds.),
10 vols., Addleton Academic Publishers, New York, 2013

Translation is credited with breathing new life to texts, and giving voice to the voiceless. The ... more Translation is credited with breathing new life to texts, and giving voice to the voiceless. The work of women authors, however, remain bereft of new lives and new voices in the world's many languages. On the other hand, Olga Castro and Emek Ergun (2018: 132) point out that, 'what matters is not simply whether or not women writers get translated, but rather (a) which geopolitical, cultural and linguistic realities are believed to yield legitimate stories and truths worthy of translation, and (b) the political consequences of those literary flows that, more often than not, perpetuate "West-to-the-Rest narratives" (Costa 2006: 73), enforcing the hegemony of western values.'

The Transnational Perspectives on 19th and 20th century Women’s Writing workshop took place withi... more The Transnational Perspectives on 19th and 20th century Women’s Writing workshop took place within the scope of the project “Women’s Writers in Turkey” supported by TÜB?TAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (109K517). In this project participants explored the history of women’s literature in Turkey in an interval spanning from 16th-century Ottoman Empire to 21st-century contemporary Turkey, aiming to establish a trilingual (Turkish, English and French) electronic database that makes biographical and bibliographical information about women writers in Turkey visible and increases both the research potential on their work and the number of citations that previous critical research gets. The project also took place in the collaborative research carried out in the framework of the COST Action entitled “Women Writers In History – Toward a New Understanding of European Literary Culture” (IS0901).

The 19th and 20th centuries witnessed an acceleration in the interaction of international women’s movement and women’s writing. This transnational movement which spread out across-borders, opened a door to the disintegration of colonial and orientalist discourse, which contained homogenous and monolithic fictions with strong influence on gender order, and also on solid constructions such as nation, ethnicity, and class.

This international workshop aimed to enliven the dialogue between texts published by women writers of different origins. The comparative look at women’s writing was animated with help of the theory of transnationalism which favors historical and experience-based relations over nationalist, ethnic, and cultural divisions.

This seminar focuses on bodies and their (imaginary?) borders. “Bordered-ness” or “un-bordered-ne... more This seminar focuses on bodies and their (imaginary?) borders. “Bordered-ness” or “un-bordered-ness” are generally understood as constructive factors in the formation of a body. For various reasons, carnal or discursive, the borders of bodies can be shattered and disturbed. This can mark them as threats by the culture; but this can also charge them with resisting power toward the limits of the culture. They can be perceived as abject, volatile or revolutionary. In other words, while proofs of destructibility of bodies threaten identities, they also open up to a space that enhances narratives. In this fertile space, narratives address questions concerning ageing, disabled, obese, traumatized, sick, dead or posthuman bodies.

In critical theory, bodies and their borders have been considered as discursive (Foucault, Agamben, Derrida, Butler) and/or as corporeal (Nancy, Butler, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze and Guattari) events. Julia Kristeva discussed threats toward the borders as abject, whereas Judith Butler argued the openness to vulnerability as formative in being a subject and a social actor. According to the first generation of literary trauma theory (Caruth, Felman, Laub), on the other hand, while the traumatic event is a bodily experience which impairs the integrity of the body and annihilates the idea of wholeness; it opens the possibility of a new History. All of these discussions revolve around the complex problem of the borders of the body, the risks on them, or the lack thereof.
Bodies can become sites of social and cultural manifestations, thus; discussing their borders may allow us to reconsider or even challenge the boundaries surrounding concepts such as gender, health, race etc.

This seminar proposes to bring together papers that discuss the fragility and breakability of the borders of bodies and the ways in which such shattering is narrated in literature, cinema and television. Participants are invited, but are not limited to, critically explore and reflect on the following questions:

What are the ways the borders of bodies can be shattered?
How does art manifest the shattered borders?
How do shattered borders affect narratives of bodies?
Where do the narratives of bodies locate the borders?
Can narratives of bodies challenge the idea of boundaries and represent bodies without referring to any borders?
How do illness narratives redefine the borders of the docile body?
How do narratives represent traumatized/wounded/vulnerable bodies?

Please submit abstracts (200-250 words) via the ACLA website between September 1 and 21. For any questions, please contact Egem Atik (egem.atik@ozyegin.edu.tr).

https://www.acla.org/seminar/narratives-bodies-without-borders

In this course, we will delve into the interrelationship between medicine and literature, travers... more In this course, we will delve into the interrelationship between medicine and literature, traversing diverse literary genres and historical periods. Our topics will include the representation of the human body in literature, the politics of health and illness, and the instrumentalisation of medicine and the social body across genres and cultural mediums. Adopting an inter-and cross-disciplinary methodology, we will discuss cultural histories of various diseases, such as tuberculosis or syphilis, and scrutinise their