CULT 501: Social and Cultural Theory

Recognising that the anthropological definition of culture is no longer adequate to understand and explain contemporary societies and their experiences, the clustering of different disciplinary perspectives around a common object of study, i.e. culture, offers the possibility for developing a distinctive area of study characterised by new methods of analysis. This configuration of disciplines collaborating around the topic of culture constitutes the substance of ‘cultural studies’. This course aims to capture the fluidity of the ‘interdiscursive space’ that characterizes cultural studies and to introduce the main lines of thought in cultural theory, which include the Frankfurt School, structuralism, semiotics, poststructuralism, postcolonial theory, psychoanalytical approaches to the study of culture, literary theory and postmodernism, etc.

CULT 504: Methods of Cultural Analysis 

The course aims to provide students with the basic principles and methodologies of social research and introduces students to key debates on social studies. It critically reviews the major approaches to social scientific investigation ranging from positivism to postmodernism and poststructuralism. The course offers a comprehensive overview of classical methodologies as well as more current approaches that have argued for more innovative methods. A wide range of research methods and the epistemological and ontological assumptions that underpin them are explored. The course aims to demonstrate the interrelatedness of theory and method, the ways in which theory informs the practice of research.

CULT 507:  Politics and Biography

This graduate seminar explores autobiography, biography, and prosopography as historical sources, focusing specifically on the late Ottoman and early Republican Turkish history. While the course will include a historiographical and theoretical overview of biographical methods in history, its primary emphasis will be on the practical application of biographical sources. Students will engage with various materials, including autobiographies, diaries, memoirs, letters, archival and visual sources, and collective biographies, to understand how these sources can inform and reshape our understanding of this transformative era. The seminar will examine the possibilities these sources offer for rethinking and rewriting late Ottoman and early Republican history, with particular attention to how individual and group identities—shaped by gender, class, ethnicity, and political stance—intersect with broader historical contexts and the prevailing mentalités of the time.

CULT 511: Introduction to Post-colonial Theory

How can the contemporary world come to be defined in terms of the political and social parameters of ruling powers? How much does the cultural scope of power, hegemony, depend on a combination of historical, geographic and political forces? This course examines the concepts of imperialism, postcolonialism, and globalism from a perspective ‘in the middle’ both geographically between East and West and temporally between the (arguably) postcolonial era of the nation-state and the post-national era of globalism. Through a consideration of primary sources from the struggle against imperialism, secondary texts examining this struggle and a small selection of artistic products from within it, this course attempts to open avenues of investigation and thought towards an understanding of the past, present and future of cultural and political hegemonies

CULT 525: Psychoanalytic Method in Culture

The aim of this course is to posit psychoanalysis as a methodology rather than a defined and delimited scientific discipline or a ‘meta-theory’ and to inquire into its possible applications in different areas of knowledge such as literary criticism, film theory, anthropology, post-colonial studies, gender studies, semantics and cultural studies in general. Special emphasis will be given to the encounters between psychoanalysis and other generalized world outlooks that also propose to serve as methodological structures, such as Marxism and feminism.

CULT 526: Gender / Body / Space

This MA seminar explores the complex relationships between gender, the body, and spatial practices across cultural, social, and political contexts. It examines how bodies are shaped by and inscribed within spaces, and how gendered identities are produced, regulated, and contested through spatial arrangements. Drawing on interdisciplinary approaches, the course engages key theoretical frameworks from feminist theory, queer studies, human geography, and critical theory. Students will analyse a range of case studies—from urban environments to domestic spaces and digital landscapes—to understand how power operates through embodied spatial experiences. Through critical readings, discussions, and research projects, the seminar encourages students to rethink the intersections of gender, embodiment, and space in contemporary and historical contexts.

CULT 527: Studies in Cultural Diversity: A Serious Study of Laughter

Humour is not simply entertainment; it is a social practice through which power, identity, memory, and hierarchy are negotiated. This course examines laughter not as a light or secondary phenomenon, but as a serious cultural and political force. Rather than approaching humour only through abstract theory, we will begin with performances and cultural materials—stand-up, absurd texts, films, memes, and comedy spaces—and ask what laughter does in specific contexts. Throughout the semester, we will revisit classical theories of humour (superiority, relief, incongruity), but we will test them against contemporary performances and historical cases. We will explore how humour disciplines and excludes, how it resists and subverts, and how it circulates across languages and empires. Special attention will be given to questions of internal hierarchies, postcolonial performance, minority language humour, and the ethical limits of laughter.

CULT 540: Culture and Everyday Life

This is an advanced anthropology course, which seeks to scrutinize classical as well as cutting-edge works in the discipline so that students can be equipped to follow and contribute to current conversations and debates. The course is designed as a seminar where after a three-week intensive introduction into the discipline of cultural anthropology, participants will read two full ethnographies. The introductory weeks will cover the historical trajectory, the basic concepts and methods of anthropology such as formulating conceptualizations of culture, relativism and the field, followed by discussions and debates pertaining to self-reflexivity, positionality and activist/public anthropology. Week 4 onwards, the seminar will switch to analysing full ethnographies in minute detail, including methodology, anthropological problematics, historical context and theoretical frame.

CULT 541: Femininity, Masculinity and ‘Modernity’

This course aims to interrogate how categories of sex, gender and sexuality are historically and culturally constructed within power relations. Through the course we are going to analyse essentialist understandings towards sex, gender and sexuality in the light of the following questions: What is the relationship between gender binary, heteronormativity and violence? What are the repressive, discriminatory and exclusionist practices in the construction of “normal” and “abnormal” categories? Can we establish a thought system that is beyond dichotomies, which is inclusive of all differences?

CULT 565: Gender and Culture

Since ‘abstract thought lost ground’ in this age as Simone de Beauvoir wrote in The Second Sex, the abstract notion ‘human being’ is not enough to explain our being referring to gender; nor is it satisfactory to refer to different social identities. In this class, while exploring in general the possible philosophical perspectives on the meanings of gender in feminist theories, we will also elaborate on the discussions on gender with the questions appearing in queer studies, sexual difference theories, intersectionality studies (regarding race, ethnicity, culture and religion together with gender), and masculinity studies.

CULT 571: Politics of Space

This course explores the multifarious relations between space and politics. It will provide the students with the conceptual vocabulary to think the social and the political spheres spatially (and vice versa). The course will complicate the students’ understanding of space as they work through a shift from ‘things in space’ to ‘the social production of space.’ The course is multi-disciplinary: it is designed for students with interests not only in humanities and social sciences but also in fields like architecture, urban studies and contemporary art.

CULT 572: Identity, Memory and Culture

The main focus of this course is the idea of forgiving and its relationship with memory. It will examine forgiving as it affects both the wrongdoer and the injured party. In the first part of the course, we will discuss and analyse philosophical discussions of the issue and in doing so we will ask whether forgiving is possible? And if so what its conditions are. In the second part, we will move from philosophical discussions of forgiving to the political ones, and in doing so we will analyse the relationship between forgiving and memory. Thus, we will discuss the following concepts through some cases: transitive justice, restorative justice, reconciliation and reconstruction. 

CULT 585: Emotions, Affections, Ethics

This course aims to address the basic structure of emotions and how they are related to character and moral action. In the first part of the course we will briefly examine some theories of emotions; we will see that though the philosophical inquiry into the nature of emotions goes back as far as Plato and Aristotle, especially after 1950 there has been an increasing interest in it. In the second part we will mostly examine the relationship between emotions and morality. We will begin with Spinoza’s account of emotions as it appears in the Ethics, and then move onto Nietzsche’s genealogical approach to resentment. Finally, we will look at some contemporary thinkers’ discussions of the relationship between emotions and morality.

CULT 592: Thinking History Beyond Human: Human-Animal Interaction

This course aims to examine the morality/ethics of our treatments of non-human animals. In doing so, it focuses on the critique of the anthropocentric and logocentric worldview and discusses the possibilities of the ethical relationship between the human-animal and the non-human animal. To this end we will ask the following questions: Do animals have moral status? Do humans have a right to use animals in their own benefit? How can we challenge the anthropocentric worldview and suggest a different ontological and ethical approach which welcome the other in its/their otherness? We will discuss these questions from a variety of moral/ethical perspectives including utilitarianism, deontology (rights-based approach), care ethics and ecofeminism. We will, then, focus on specific philosophers/thinkers such as Levinas, Derrida, Agamben.