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Emory University: Annual Turkish Lecture Series With Author Elif Batuman
The Halle Institute for Global Research invites you to attend a lecture by Elif Batuman, author of critically acclaimed books such as The Idiot and The Possessed which explore her identity as a Turkish-American woman, intentionality about the precision of language, and befuddlement in the early age of email.
In her first book, The Possessed, Elif Batuman wrote about her experiences studying Russian literature as a PhD student in America, Russia, and Uzbekistan. She did not initially think of her attraction to Russian literature – which is also manifested by the title of her first novel, The Idiot – as being related to her Turkish family background, or to her experiences in Turkey as a child.
After The Possessed came out in 2010, she moved to Istanbul, where she worked at Koç University and wrote for the New Yorker magazine. She lived in and visited Istanbul regularly between 2009 and 2015. During that time, she saw the beginning of the Syrian Civil War, the opening of the Museum of Innocence, the full run of The Magnificent Century, the Gezi protests, HDP parliamentary success in 2015, and the Suruç bombing. Witnessing such a politically vital and complicated period of history, experiencing the tensions of national identity more closely, and coming to understand, as an adult, the country that shaped her parents, prompted Elif to rethink her attraction to Russian novels and her understanding of Turkish history. Through the lens of current events, she came to discover that works of Dostoevsky are more closely related to the ideology of Atatürk than she originally realized.
This event includes a seated luncheon. Please RSVP by Thursday, January 23, to reserve a seat