This edited volume collectively aims to take stock, address blind spots, and chart new directions in Turkish German literary studies. In the process it seeks to (re)examine the category Turkish German and its aesthetic and political implications as a literary designation. While returning to earlier debates (on reception, categorization, and topoi) in Turkish German literary studies it discusses recent developments and their epistemological implications. Chapters engender archival expansions and illustrate literary contributions to and interventions into discourses on memory, canonization and disciplinary configurations, intersectionality, and (post)migration. Additionally, the question of the archive is a focal point throughout, shedding light on literary engagements with various cultural, historical, and national archives, while also asking about Turkish German literature’s place in physical, discursive, and cultural archives, including archival processes and memory culture. It further examines different, sometimes intersecting networks and alliances, within which Turkish German literature is placed, received, circulated, and positioned.

Ela Gezen is Professor of German at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA. Her research and teaching focus on twentieth- and twenty-first-century German literature and culture, with emphases on literatures of migration, minority discourses, and transnationalism. She is the author of Brecht, Turkish Theater, and Turkish-German Literature: Reception, Adaptation, and Innovation after 1960. In addition to her editorial work, she has published articles on music, theater, and literature, focusing on the intersection between aesthetics and politics in both Turkish and German contexts.