CMPL 364 - Orhan Pamuk and the Politics of World Literature

FC ARHU CD

4 credits
This course turns to Orhan Pamuk’s writings to examine transformations in Turkish history, identity, and culture. We will read key narratives by Pamuk to trace this writer’s emergence on the Turkish literary scene and his transformation from a local to a global Literatur. His writings will help us understand his role as a mediator between the Ottoman past, the Turkish national tradition, and an international canon represented by works and film adaptations from Dostoevsky, Kafka, and Eco among others. Questions of secularism, Islam, memory, and translation will be inseparable from our discussions of modernity, historiography, intertextuality, orientalism, metafiction, and postcoloniality.
Prerequisites & Notes: CMPL 200 or approval of the instructor