Book by Ela Gezen
Brecht, Turkish Theater, and Turkish-German Literature: Reception, Adaptation, and Innovation after 1960
Bertolt Brecht died in 1956, but his theory and practice has continued to shape debates about the... more Bertolt Brecht died in 1956, but his theory and practice has continued to shape debates about the politics of culture - not only in Germany, but in Turkey as well, where a new generation of intellectuals emerged during a period of liberalization in the 1960s and sought to link culture to politics, art to life, theater to revolutionary practice. Ever since, Brecht has connected two cultures that have become ever more intertwined. Drawing upon archival research and close textual analysis, this study reconstructs how Brecht's thought was first interpreted by theater practitioners in Turkey and then by Turkish writers living in Germany. Gezen first focuses on Turkey in the 1960s, reconstructing theater programming and critical debates in literary journals in order to explore how Brechtian stage productions thematized issues in Turkish politics and cultural affairs. She then traces the significance of Brechtian theater practice and aesthetics for Aras Ören (1939-) and Emine Sevgi Özdamar (1946-), two important writers, actors, and dramatists who emigrated to Germany. By shedding light on their theatrical involvement in Turkey and East and West Germany, this study not only introduces a new context for comprehending individual works, but also enhances our understanding of the intellectual interchanges that shaped the emergence of Turkish-German literature.
Articles and Book Chapters by Ela Gezen
Fragile Bindungen, empathische Solidarität und literarische Diskursräume bei Deniz Utlu
undercurrents: Forum für linke Literaturwissenschaft, 2025
Dieser Beitrag befasst sich mit Deniz Utlus essayistischem Werk und seiner Beteiligung an ver... more Dieser Beitrag befasst sich mit Deniz Utlus essayistischem Werk und seiner Beteiligung an verschiedenen Kollaborationen, die Selbstpositionierungen formulieren, Diskursverschiebungen einleiten und Empowerment für Marginalisierte ermöglichen. Hierbei liegt mein Fokus nicht nur auf verschiedenen Ansätzen Utlus in Bezug auf die Formierung und Bildung von Netzwerken und Allianzen in der postmigrantischen Gesellschaft, sondern auch darauf, wie diese auf frühere Formen aufbauen. Zudem wird reflektiert, wie sich solidarische emanzipative Kulturpraktiken auf literaturwissenschaftliche Methoden und Arbeitsweisen auswirken.
An Archive of Migration: The Ballhaus Naunynstraße in the 1980s (with Olivia Landry)
Critical Stages, 2023
In this essay, we explore a small archive of programs designed and printed in the 1980s to promot... more In this essay, we explore a small archive of programs designed and printed in the 1980s to promote the theatre and performance events at the Ballhaus Naunynstraße of that period. As one of the critical stages of early postmigrant theatre in Berlin, the Ballhaus has received much attention since the early 2000s. A return to an earlier period in this theatre’s history, with particular focus on the Ballhaus as a community space and municipal venue, reveals a longer historical continuity of transnational collaborations and narratives. Coalescing migration histories, transnational theatre work and theories of the archive, this essay presents a critical cultural and historical intervention.
Türkisch-deutsche literarische Begegnungen in Westberlin um 1980
Berlin International: Literaturszenen in der geteilten Stadt (1970‒1989), eds. Klengel, Susanne, Müller-Tamm, Jutta, Regeler, Lukas Nils and Schneider, Ulrike. De Gruyter, 2023
(West)Berliner Zeitlichkeiten und das Archiv der Migration: Aras Ören und Deniz Utlu
Zeitschrift für Interkulturelle Germanistik 14.2, 2023
In his poetics Aras Ören explicitly addresses the impact of Turkish immigration on West Berlin an... more In his poetics Aras Ören explicitly addresses the impact of Turkish immigration on West Berlin and its literary manifestation. Identifying himself as a kind of literary archivist, Ören indicates his work’s evocation of multiple and changing temporalities and highlights his role in shaping them. His poetics, as this essay shows, is thus marked by a dynamic relationship not only between him (the writer) and his surroundings (West Berlin), but also between various temporalities across his oeuvre, continuously establishing connections between Turkish and German contexts. This essay further explores Ören’s oeuvre’s significance within postmigrant frameworks, specifically in the context of Deniz Utlu’s work, to understand continuities and ruptures in the formulation of an archive of migration.
Trümmerhaufen der Vergangenheit, das Mittelmeer und die Namenlosen: Merle Krögers Havarie (2015)
Grenzfälle. Dokumentarische Praxis zwischen Film und Literatur bei Merle Kröger und Philip Scheffner, ed. Nicole Wolf, 2021
Undercurrents - Forum für linke Literaturwissenschaft, 2019
Comparative Drama , 2018
In the early stages of Turkish migration to West Germany, Turkish artists, musicians, and theater... more In the early stages of Turkish migration to West Germany, Turkish artists, musicians, and theater practitioners, who did not immigrate to Germany as guest workers, highlighted the significance of Turkish culture in their efforts to actively shape processes of integration. They conceived of integration not as a unidirectional adaptation to a supposedly pre-existing German majority culture, but rather as a bidirectional process of exchange between Germans and Turks predicated on attention to each country’s societal, political, historical and cultural specificities. As artists and writers, they perceived culture as a space to participate in and actively shape public political discourse in ways that involved both Turkish and German residents of West Berlin. Numerous cultural institutions, such as the Kunstamt Kreuzberg and Neukölln (Arts Council for the districts of Kreuzberg and Neukölln) and the Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Artists’ House Bethanien, a center for arts and social affairs) for example, sponsored events that aimed to promote Turkish culture in ways that moved beyond the folklorization, Orientalization, and essentialization that had been on offer. Particularly prominent among the rosters of participants were Turkish theater ensembles. This essay examines theatrical efforts by Turkish artists and intellectuals during the late 1970s and early 1980s, with emphasis on Vasıf Öngören’s Kollektiv Theater. Their programming and contributions, I argue, represent one current of a broader effort to represent Turkish culture as multi-layered and essential to political debates on integration. Calling for an engagement with past practices such as Öngören’s ensemble’s, and for an examination of their relationship to the present, my paper asks us to reconsider Turkish-German encounters of the past as situated firmly within discourses on integration, and to reread their cultural-political legacies.
Gegenwartsliteratur: ein germanistisches Jahrbuch, 2018
In 2013 Esther Dischereit collaborated with DJ Ipek Ipekcioğlu on the
bilingual text-performance ... more In 2013 Esther Dischereit collaborated with DJ Ipek Ipekcioğlu on the
bilingual text-performance entitled Klagelieder (2013), which precede the
prologue of the multi-genre text Blumen für Otello. Die Verbrechen von Jena
(2014). Dedicated to the victims of the racially motived NSU killings, the
Klagelieder were broadcast for the first time by various radio stations in
Germany in September 2013 in the immediate aftermath of the German
parliament inquiry committee’s presentation of its findings on the NSU.
Located at the nexus of art and politics, the Klagelieder shift the attention
away from the perpetrators to the victims and their families, representing,
as this essay shows, a distinctive poetic-musical medium to publicly address and collectively mourn their loss.
Back to the Future. Tradition and Innovation in German Studies, edited by Marc Silberman, 2018
In the 1960s, Turkey witnessed the liberalization of governmental censorship, which led to the tr... more In the 1960s, Turkey witnessed the liberalization of governmental censorship, which led to the translation and publication of foundational texts of Marxism appearing in translation alongside Bertolt Brecht’s theoretical and literary work. The reception of these two bodies of thought prompted the adaptation of Brecht’s work for the Turkish stage as well as a broader engagement with his writings on theater. A crucial forum for the Turkish encounter with Brecht’s work was the International Student Theater Festival in Erlangen, Germany (1949–68). Journalist, playwright, and stage designer Sermet Çağan, a vital participant in debates on the politics of culture and the role of theater in society, was invited to Erlangen in 1964 and 1965 with two of his plays. This essay examines Çağan’s use of Brechtian elements and his materialist-dialectical approach to history in War Game/Play (Savaş Oyunu), lauded as the most successful and significant play of the 1965 festival.
May Ayim is one of the best-known representatives of both the Black German movement and Black Ger... more May Ayim is one of the best-known representatives of both the Black German movement and Black German literature. Her individual and collaborative works helped to shape collective modes of Black German identity, making visible and affirming ties to the Black diaspora. This paper examines the intersections of music—specifically, the blues—and literature in Ayim’s poetry, focusing in particular on blues in schwarz weiss (1995). Here Ayim references the African oral tradition not only through her inclusion of Adinkra symbols, but also through a blues aesthetic that manifests itself in scat-like interjections, rhythmic breaks and patterns, and repetitions. In addition to these formal aspects, her blues aesthetic also relies on the West African tradition of “Nommo”—the naming process. Ayim’s poetry follows this tradition by incorporating her personal experiences, addressing pressing socio-political issues, and by constructing and presenting a self-determined Black German subject as member of a larger community, within and beyond Germany. Her essayistic and poetic works stand in dialogical relationship with each other, and serve as a forum to publicly discuss discrimination and marginalization as universal problems. As with the Blues, this essay argues, Ayim’s poetry presents socio-political problems as resolvable by formulating a “we” capable of action.
Aras Ören and the (West) German Left
Examining both published and unpublished materials overlooked by existing scholarship, this essay... more Examining both published and unpublished materials overlooked by existing scholarship, this essay sheds light on the transnational formation of literary and political genres through discussion of Aras Ören. As a poet and activist, Ören was one of the earliest and most significant contributors to the emergence of Turkish-German literature and was affiliated with political circles and aesthetics of writers such as Bertolt Brecht. While focusing on Aras Ören's key role within Die Rote Nelke (an anti-fascist union of progressive artists allied with communist class struggle), the essay traces the circulation of Turkish working-class viewpoints into the world of German literary politics. Two years after joining Die Rote Nelke in 1970, Ören became the chair of its disciplinary collective “Group of Writing Workers,” which actively strove to include workers as well as artists in their cultural–political activities. Ören's transnational orientation shaped his milieu through his poetry and his writings about the politicization of literature, the politics of aesthetics, and the social responsibility of the artist in West Berlin during the early 1970s.
Brecht on the Turkish Stage: Adaptation, Experimentation, and Theatre Aesthetics in Genco Erkal’s Dostlar Tiyatrosu
This essay examines the interpretation and implementation of Bertolt Brecht’s dramaturgy and thea... more This essay examines the interpretation and implementation of Bertolt Brecht’s dramaturgy and theatre practice in the Turkish context, focusing specifically on the theater ensemble Dostlar Tiyatrosu and its co-founder Genco Erkal, a dramatist, actor, and director. Rather than closely examining individual productions by Erkal, this essay engages with his theory of theatrical practice, highlighting Erkal’s interpretation, transformation and adaptation of Brechtian theatre aesthetics for the Turkish context. Even as he drew on elements of Brecht’s epic theatre and critical dramaturgy in the creation of a new political theater aesthetic, Erkal emphasized the necessity to adapt Brechtian concepts to pressing national concerns as well as political and historical events, and to place them in dialogue with Turkish aesthetic traditions and the Turkish literary Left. Brecht thus informs Erkal’s general conceptualization of theatre as a catalyst for societal change, and had an impact on his specific performance practice within the Dostlar Tiyatrosu—a life’s work in experimentation and adaptation that is still on-going.
Covergent Realisms: Aras Ören, Nazım Hikmet, and Bertolt Brecht
German Studies Review 38.1 , Feb 2015
This article examines the representation of Cold War Berlin in Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s novel Seltsa... more This article examines the representation of Cold War Berlin in Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s novel Seltsame Sterne starren zur Erde (2003), paying particular attention to the unique role played by sound within this text. Specifically, it is argued that the Brecht and Eisler songs which are a constant companion to the novel’s narrator serve as a means of linking different city spaces to one another: East to West Berlin, and both parts of Berlin to Istanbul. In Özdamar’s text, this essay demonstrates, Berlin’s topography is spatially and aurally constituted and inclusive of the narrator’s plural geographical, political, and cultural attachments.
Colloquia Germanica 44.4 (2011), published December 2014
The Turkish music collective Bandista was founded in Istanbul in 2006. Through multilingual frami... more The Turkish music collective Bandista was founded in Istanbul in 2006. Through multilingual framing texts provided on their website and their incorporation of a wide variety of musical genres they emphasize the international dimension of their music. Furthermore, their songs are politically motivated, and address universal issues of exile, deportation, and human rights. In choosing the Internet as its sole medium for distribution and through their invitation to download and share their music at no cost through technology not bounded by the nation state Bandista promote distribution on their own terms. By examining their latest album’s lyrics, distribution practices, and digital meta-commentary, this paper argues that Bandista avail themselves of new technology to re-activate and re-imagine longstanding calls for international solidarity in the face of human rights violations, thus situating their music at the digital nexus of politics and aesthetics.
Jarhbuch Türkisch-deutsche Studien (2011)
Studien zur Deutschen Sprache und Literatur 24 (2010)
Special Issues by Ela Gezen
Guest Editor, Monatshefte, Special Issue - Aras Ören
Monatshefte 112.4, 2021
Invited Guest Co-Editor, Jahrbuch Türkisch-deutsche Studien 2015, Special Issue – Turkish-German Studies: Past, Present, and Future
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Book by Ela Gezen
Articles and Book Chapters by Ela Gezen
bilingual text-performance entitled Klagelieder (2013), which precede the
prologue of the multi-genre text Blumen für Otello. Die Verbrechen von Jena
(2014). Dedicated to the victims of the racially motived NSU killings, the
Klagelieder were broadcast for the first time by various radio stations in
Germany in September 2013 in the immediate aftermath of the German
parliament inquiry committee’s presentation of its findings on the NSU.
Located at the nexus of art and politics, the Klagelieder shift the attention
away from the perpetrators to the victims and their families, representing,
as this essay shows, a distinctive poetic-musical medium to publicly address and collectively mourn their loss.
Special Issues by Ela Gezen