Themes

Linguistic Codes and Communication Across Cultures in the Context of the Global Humanities Project (Moderators: Cevza Sevgen, Didar Akar)

As is the case in many cross-cultural contacts, in our own global humanities project too English is the lingua franca among the Arabic, English and Turkish speakers in the group. Although all of the participants possess near native fluency in English, we cannot assume total intelligibility within the group. How can we assess the levels of mutual comprehension? This is obviously a daunting task but if we take a specific event location such as one of the Istanbul panels of this very project, we can produce data driven in-depth analyses by applying qualitative research methods, particularly discourse analysis.

  • Cevza Sevgen (BU): “BU Humanities Courses and Their Raison D’être” 
  • Meg Russett (USC & BU):"Teaching the English Romantics to Boğaziçi Students"
  • Kim Fortuny (BU): "Serving as ERASMUS Coordinator at Boğaziçi"
  • Özlem Berk Albachten (BU): "Translation/Interpretation Across Cultures"
  • Daniel De Wispelare (GWU): "Humanities, Translation, and Productivity of Incommunicability."
  • Didar Akar (BU): "Discourse Analysis: A Proposal"
Science as a Component of Culture (Moderator: Alpar Sevgen)

Science is driven by intellectual curiosity to understand our environment, from the smallest to the largest scales. It has enjoyed the support of the political/economic establishments however, with largely utilitarian expectations, particularly for the power and wealth it may bring, which it has indeed. Science is also a fact of our everyday lives; together with arts, philosophy and literature it conditions the way we think and function in society. Thus it is actually an integral part of culture, and must be treated as such and included in any discourse on global humanities. 

  • Douglas Nixon (GWU): "The Influence of Culture in the Study and Application of Immunology, Including A Concept Of "Social Immunology"
  • Carlos Flores Jacques (AAU): "Transgressing between Science and Society"
  • Hadi Özbal (BU): "The Role of Archeometry in Discovering Cultural Heritage"
  • Alpar Sevgen (BU): "Science as a Component Of Culture"
Rethinking Identity in Humanities (Moderator: Mine Eder)

Humanities, with its wide range of cultural forms and practices (including oral history, life-story work and auto-biography, drama and performance, architecture and the built environment, material artifacts, monuments, exhibitions, museums, written histories, imaginative literature, archival collections of documents and other material, painting, graphic design, photography, film, television, video, multimedia/virtual reality, commemoration, and heritage), have long been a powerful instrument of recognizing and (re)presenting different identities, often giving voice to  those who are marginalized or excluded for being simply different. In fact, at its best, humanities can be seen as a platform for celebration of differences and diversity. This session aims to explore the pros and cons of identity studies in humanities. How empowering are they? What are their limits? Is there too much obsession and idealizing of identities generating more difference than unity? 

  • Driss Maghraoui (AAU):"The Multiple Dimensions of Identity and Politics"
  • Chad Heap (GWU): "Using Identity to Think More Broadly about U.S. History"
  • Koray Durak (BU): “Formation of Modern Turkish Identity: Byzantium in High School Text Books”