Papers by Elif Irem Az
European Journal of Women's Studies
Inspired by a Danez Smith poem, this essay is a ‘little prayer’ for LGBTQIA+ people and organizer... more Inspired by a Danez Smith poem, this essay is a ‘little prayer’ for LGBTQIA+ people and organizers to be able to collectively grieve the family and friends they have lost, the relations they had to end, the social privileges they never had, or lost before and after sharing their queerness. It argues for the militant force of this slow-paced, ghostly, and ambiguous grief in queer lives, and in the LGBTQIA+ movements in Turkey and elsewhere. The author draws on 4 years of organizing at Boysan’ s House – a living memory space, and community hub in Istanbul – and the 12-hour oral history conducted with Mother Sema, who has been mobilizing her motherhood and her grief as a pro-LGBTQIA+ organizer since 2006. The essay suggests that ambiguous grief can be relearned and re-membered as a radically transformative force that is already constitutive of queer communities. It situates the histories and presents of Mother Sema and Boysan’s House amid diverse experiences of resilience and resistanc...
Thesis Chapters by Elif Irem Az
Mining Interruption: Coal, labor and life after the Soma mine disaster Elif İrem Az "Mining Inter... more Mining Interruption: Coal, labor and life after the Soma mine disaster Elif İrem Az "Mining Interruption" tackles the question of how to make sense of disaster by exploring the Soma mine disaster. On May 13, 2014, an explosion in the Eynez underground lignite coal mine caused a fire that blocked the exit, sealing in 301 mineworkers who died of carbon monoxide poisoning in the town of Soma, in the city of Manisa, in Aegean Turkey. While the European Union was becoming relatively greener next door, coal extraction had begun to increase in Turkey after the Justice and Development Party [Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi] came to power in early 2000s. The relative decline of coal in the Global North paved the way for increased amounts of internal coal extraction and consumption in the energy geographies of the Global South and other non-Western countries as well as of Indigenous lands. The shift created biopolitically, socially, and technologically renewed forms of exploitation of labor, bodies, and nature, which contextualize the Soma mine disaster. Based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork and 68 open-ended interviews conducted in the Soma Coal Basin, this dissertation presents one constellation of the disaster by exploring four figures-The Accidented, the Bride, the Deserving, and the Striker-both as effects and as ongoing temporalities of the disaster. It contributes to critical disaster studies by defining and studying disaster not as a category of event, but as a concept through which multiple
MILITARY MASCULINITIES IN THE MAKING: PROFESSIONAL MILITARY EDUCATION IN CONTEMPORARY TURKEY Elif... more MILITARY MASCULINITIES IN THE MAKING: PROFESSIONAL MILITARY EDUCATION IN CONTEMPORARY TURKEY Elif İrem Az Cultural Studies, MA Thesis, 2014 Supervisor: Ayşe Gül Altınay
Call For Papers by Elif Irem Az
Call for Papers: "Disasters in and of the Middle East: Event, Place, Intensity"
March 29-30, 2025... more Call for Papers: "Disasters in and of the Middle East: Event, Place, Intensity"
March 29-30, 2025
Harvard University, USA
What is disaster? What is this present moment if not a time of disasters?
Identifying the omnipresent and omnivorous presence of “our presentism” in 2015, François Hartog wrote, “Not to forget a further aspect of our present: that the future is perceived as a threat not a promise. The future is a time of disasters, and ones we have, moreover, brought upon ourselves” (Hartog 2015, xviii).
Different writers have been pinpointing and/or offering existing and potential ways of conceiving the present and the future (Koselleck 1979, 2002; Berlant 2011; Horn 2018). “The shock of a closed future” (Furet 1995) is both the anticipation of the future and the experience of the present as a time of disasters: an experience of the present as saturated with the future, as a “noneventful intensity” (Povinelli 2021) that challenges the ‘enlightened’ and capitalist conception of progressive time.
In this day and age, is it still possible to think of disasters as superlative events, or are they events at all? For whom are they noneventful and for whom are they still experienced as shocks and ruptures? If they are no longer significant events, what to make of the landscape, trauma, pain, and/or avenues of desirable change that disasters often generate? How to deal, then, with disasters past and present?
Within disaster discourse, the Middle East is rarely the focus for discussions of changing environments, or diverse responses to superlative events. Nevertheless, the region has been the site of earthquakes, famine, flood, wars and conflicts, genocides, massacres, as well as other environmental, industrial, and technological catastrophes. To that end, the Disaster Studies Initiative at Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies is pleased to announce a 2-day conference to center the region in scholarly discourse on disasters.
Drawing on critical disaster studies, we reject both the binary between ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ disasters, and the confinement of disaster studies to the field of disaster and risk management and public health. We aim to highlight the enmeshed social, political and environmental factors that undergird disasters in the Middle East. We hope to bring together locally relevant insights to the ongoing global inquiry on disaster, which is currently dominated by climate change exceptionalism that obscures (past and present) disasters in the Middle East, the Global South and the Indigenous geographies of the Global North.
We are interested in papers that engage the following questions and themes:
Relevant questions:
● What is disaster and is it / can it be a politically and/or theoretically relevant concept?
● For whom/which communities is disaster still an exceptional experience and for whom is it no longer politically/environmentally/socially significant?
● In what ways can a Middle Eastern orientation disrupt accepted conventions in Disaster Studies?
● What does the ‘spectacle of disaster’ reveal or obscure about its preconditions? Wherein lies its appeal to observers, historically or today? What do we gain and/or lose by “event-izing” disaster? What other counter-concepts can be introduced in discussions of disasters?
Potential themes:
● Disaster imperialism in the Middle East
● Intersections of “natural” disaster & war (e.g, conflict ecology, compound crises)
● Disaster, disability and debility
● Disaster and work/labor
● Historical approaches to disaster management
● Disaster vis-à-vis the projects of Enlightenment and modernity
● Ruination and memory
● Disasters, nonhuman beings and the more-than-human experiences
Submission Details and Timeline
All scholars across fields are welcome to apply, though we particularly encourage scholars currently working at universities in the Middle East / SWANA region.
June 30: Deadline to submit abstracts (250-500 words, text only) and short bio.
Please submit abstracts or any additional questions to: [email protected]
July 15: Notification of accepted papers
March 29-30: Conference
References
Berlant, L. (2011). Cruel Optimism, Becoming Event: A Response. The Barnard Center for Research on Women and The Center for Gender and Sexuality Studies at NYU, 12.
Furet, F. (1999). The passing of an illusion: The idea of communism in the twentieth century. Transl. Deborah Furet. University of Chicago Press.
Koselleck, R. (1979). Futures past (p. 159164). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Koselleck, R. (2002). Some Questions Concerning the Conceptual History of ‘Crisis.’. Culture and crisis: The case of Germany and Sweden, 12-23.
Hartog, F. (2015). Regimes of historicity: Presentism and experiences of time. Columbia University Press.
Horn, E. (2018). The future as catastrophe: imagining disaster in the modern age. Columbia University Press.
Povinelli, E. A. (2021). Between Gaia and ground: Four axioms of existence and the ancestral catastrophe of late liberalism. Duke University Press.
For this year’s ISSG conference (April 2022), we take inspiration from recent work that connects ... more For this year’s ISSG conference (April 2022), we take inspiration from recent work that connects labor, the body, sound and listening.
Please submit abstracts of no longer than 250 words to [email protected] by February 20, 2022. Audio and/or visual presentations are more than welcome. Acceptances and rejections will be sent no later than February 25th. All presentations will be delivered virtually.
İstanbul Sabancı Üniversitesi, Karaköy Minerva Palas 20.yüzyıl savaşlar, soykırımlar ve diğer siy... more İstanbul Sabancı Üniversitesi, Karaköy Minerva Palas 20.yüzyıl savaşlar, soykırımlar ve diğer siyasal şiddet türlerinin yaşandığı bir dönem olmuştur. Bu yüzyıl aynı zamanda feminist ve LGBTQI toplumsal hareketlerinin küresel boyutta mücadele verdiği ve kuramlar geliştirdiği bir döneme de tekabül etmektedir. Bazılarının "hafıza patlaması" olarak nitelendirdiği bir süreçten geçtiğimiz bu günlerde, bu konferans savaşların, soykırımların ve diğer siyasal şiddet türlerinin nasıl hatırlandığını toplumsal cinsiyet merceği altında incelemeyi amaçlamaktadır. Konferansın ele alacağı ana sorular aşağıdakilerle sınırlı olmamakla birlikte şöyledir:
Palace 20th century has been a century of wars, genocides, and other forms of political violence.... more Palace 20th century has been a century of wars, genocides, and other forms of political violence. It has also been a century of feminist and LGBTQI struggles and theorizing globally. At the peak of what is sometimes called the "memory boom," this conference seeks to explore the different ways in which wars, genocides, and other forms of political violence are remembered through a gendered lens. Central questions include (but are not limited to):
Uploads
Papers by Elif Irem Az
Thesis Chapters by Elif Irem Az
Call For Papers by Elif Irem Az
March 29-30, 2025
Harvard University, USA
What is disaster? What is this present moment if not a time of disasters?
Identifying the omnipresent and omnivorous presence of “our presentism” in 2015, François Hartog wrote, “Not to forget a further aspect of our present: that the future is perceived as a threat not a promise. The future is a time of disasters, and ones we have, moreover, brought upon ourselves” (Hartog 2015, xviii).
Different writers have been pinpointing and/or offering existing and potential ways of conceiving the present and the future (Koselleck 1979, 2002; Berlant 2011; Horn 2018). “The shock of a closed future” (Furet 1995) is both the anticipation of the future and the experience of the present as a time of disasters: an experience of the present as saturated with the future, as a “noneventful intensity” (Povinelli 2021) that challenges the ‘enlightened’ and capitalist conception of progressive time.
In this day and age, is it still possible to think of disasters as superlative events, or are they events at all? For whom are they noneventful and for whom are they still experienced as shocks and ruptures? If they are no longer significant events, what to make of the landscape, trauma, pain, and/or avenues of desirable change that disasters often generate? How to deal, then, with disasters past and present?
Within disaster discourse, the Middle East is rarely the focus for discussions of changing environments, or diverse responses to superlative events. Nevertheless, the region has been the site of earthquakes, famine, flood, wars and conflicts, genocides, massacres, as well as other environmental, industrial, and technological catastrophes. To that end, the Disaster Studies Initiative at Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies is pleased to announce a 2-day conference to center the region in scholarly discourse on disasters.
Drawing on critical disaster studies, we reject both the binary between ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ disasters, and the confinement of disaster studies to the field of disaster and risk management and public health. We aim to highlight the enmeshed social, political and environmental factors that undergird disasters in the Middle East. We hope to bring together locally relevant insights to the ongoing global inquiry on disaster, which is currently dominated by climate change exceptionalism that obscures (past and present) disasters in the Middle East, the Global South and the Indigenous geographies of the Global North.
We are interested in papers that engage the following questions and themes:
Relevant questions:
● What is disaster and is it / can it be a politically and/or theoretically relevant concept?
● For whom/which communities is disaster still an exceptional experience and for whom is it no longer politically/environmentally/socially significant?
● In what ways can a Middle Eastern orientation disrupt accepted conventions in Disaster Studies?
● What does the ‘spectacle of disaster’ reveal or obscure about its preconditions? Wherein lies its appeal to observers, historically or today? What do we gain and/or lose by “event-izing” disaster? What other counter-concepts can be introduced in discussions of disasters?
Potential themes:
● Disaster imperialism in the Middle East
● Intersections of “natural” disaster & war (e.g, conflict ecology, compound crises)
● Disaster, disability and debility
● Disaster and work/labor
● Historical approaches to disaster management
● Disaster vis-à-vis the projects of Enlightenment and modernity
● Ruination and memory
● Disasters, nonhuman beings and the more-than-human experiences
Submission Details and Timeline
All scholars across fields are welcome to apply, though we particularly encourage scholars currently working at universities in the Middle East / SWANA region.
June 30: Deadline to submit abstracts (250-500 words, text only) and short bio.
Please submit abstracts or any additional questions to: [email protected]
July 15: Notification of accepted papers
March 29-30: Conference
References
Berlant, L. (2011). Cruel Optimism, Becoming Event: A Response. The Barnard Center for Research on Women and The Center for Gender and Sexuality Studies at NYU, 12.
Furet, F. (1999). The passing of an illusion: The idea of communism in the twentieth century. Transl. Deborah Furet. University of Chicago Press.
Koselleck, R. (1979). Futures past (p. 159164). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Koselleck, R. (2002). Some Questions Concerning the Conceptual History of ‘Crisis.’. Culture and crisis: The case of Germany and Sweden, 12-23.
Hartog, F. (2015). Regimes of historicity: Presentism and experiences of time. Columbia University Press.
Horn, E. (2018). The future as catastrophe: imagining disaster in the modern age. Columbia University Press.
Povinelli, E. A. (2021). Between Gaia and ground: Four axioms of existence and the ancestral catastrophe of late liberalism. Duke University Press.
Please submit abstracts of no longer than 250 words to [email protected] by February 20, 2022. Audio and/or visual presentations are more than welcome. Acceptances and rejections will be sent no later than February 25th. All presentations will be delivered virtually.
March 29-30, 2025
Harvard University, USA
What is disaster? What is this present moment if not a time of disasters?
Identifying the omnipresent and omnivorous presence of “our presentism” in 2015, François Hartog wrote, “Not to forget a further aspect of our present: that the future is perceived as a threat not a promise. The future is a time of disasters, and ones we have, moreover, brought upon ourselves” (Hartog 2015, xviii).
Different writers have been pinpointing and/or offering existing and potential ways of conceiving the present and the future (Koselleck 1979, 2002; Berlant 2011; Horn 2018). “The shock of a closed future” (Furet 1995) is both the anticipation of the future and the experience of the present as a time of disasters: an experience of the present as saturated with the future, as a “noneventful intensity” (Povinelli 2021) that challenges the ‘enlightened’ and capitalist conception of progressive time.
In this day and age, is it still possible to think of disasters as superlative events, or are they events at all? For whom are they noneventful and for whom are they still experienced as shocks and ruptures? If they are no longer significant events, what to make of the landscape, trauma, pain, and/or avenues of desirable change that disasters often generate? How to deal, then, with disasters past and present?
Within disaster discourse, the Middle East is rarely the focus for discussions of changing environments, or diverse responses to superlative events. Nevertheless, the region has been the site of earthquakes, famine, flood, wars and conflicts, genocides, massacres, as well as other environmental, industrial, and technological catastrophes. To that end, the Disaster Studies Initiative at Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies is pleased to announce a 2-day conference to center the region in scholarly discourse on disasters.
Drawing on critical disaster studies, we reject both the binary between ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ disasters, and the confinement of disaster studies to the field of disaster and risk management and public health. We aim to highlight the enmeshed social, political and environmental factors that undergird disasters in the Middle East. We hope to bring together locally relevant insights to the ongoing global inquiry on disaster, which is currently dominated by climate change exceptionalism that obscures (past and present) disasters in the Middle East, the Global South and the Indigenous geographies of the Global North.
We are interested in papers that engage the following questions and themes:
Relevant questions:
● What is disaster and is it / can it be a politically and/or theoretically relevant concept?
● For whom/which communities is disaster still an exceptional experience and for whom is it no longer politically/environmentally/socially significant?
● In what ways can a Middle Eastern orientation disrupt accepted conventions in Disaster Studies?
● What does the ‘spectacle of disaster’ reveal or obscure about its preconditions? Wherein lies its appeal to observers, historically or today? What do we gain and/or lose by “event-izing” disaster? What other counter-concepts can be introduced in discussions of disasters?
Potential themes:
● Disaster imperialism in the Middle East
● Intersections of “natural” disaster & war (e.g, conflict ecology, compound crises)
● Disaster, disability and debility
● Disaster and work/labor
● Historical approaches to disaster management
● Disaster vis-à-vis the projects of Enlightenment and modernity
● Ruination and memory
● Disasters, nonhuman beings and the more-than-human experiences
Submission Details and Timeline
All scholars across fields are welcome to apply, though we particularly encourage scholars currently working at universities in the Middle East / SWANA region.
June 30: Deadline to submit abstracts (250-500 words, text only) and short bio.
Please submit abstracts or any additional questions to: [email protected]
July 15: Notification of accepted papers
March 29-30: Conference
References
Berlant, L. (2011). Cruel Optimism, Becoming Event: A Response. The Barnard Center for Research on Women and The Center for Gender and Sexuality Studies at NYU, 12.
Furet, F. (1999). The passing of an illusion: The idea of communism in the twentieth century. Transl. Deborah Furet. University of Chicago Press.
Koselleck, R. (1979). Futures past (p. 159164). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Koselleck, R. (2002). Some Questions Concerning the Conceptual History of ‘Crisis.’. Culture and crisis: The case of Germany and Sweden, 12-23.
Hartog, F. (2015). Regimes of historicity: Presentism and experiences of time. Columbia University Press.
Horn, E. (2018). The future as catastrophe: imagining disaster in the modern age. Columbia University Press.
Povinelli, E. A. (2021). Between Gaia and ground: Four axioms of existence and the ancestral catastrophe of late liberalism. Duke University Press.
Please submit abstracts of no longer than 250 words to [email protected] by February 20, 2022. Audio and/or visual presentations are more than welcome. Acceptances and rejections will be sent no later than February 25th. All presentations will be delivered virtually.