This dissertation is an ethnographic study of politics of youth culturing in contemporary Turkey. More specifically, it analyzes the politics of temporality that characterized the youth culturing program of the ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi/AKP) over the decade of 2010s. On the one hand, it focuses...
This dissertation is a cultural history of state-sponsored film in India and Iran. I focus on the 1960s-1980s, a period during which both countries enacted sweeping development agendas, which included industrialization, the expansion of higher education, and social reforms. I engage in a comparative analysis of each state’s pedagogies of...
International media immediately lambasted plans to build a Louvre and a Guggenheim museum in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE) as the whimsy of wealthy sheikhs using oil money to “buy culture.” The museums are part of a $27b development project called Saadiyat Island. While Saadiyat is spectacular, dismissing it...
My dissertation examines group dynamics of minority populations during times of violent conflict. By applying a comparative analysis to case studies drawn from the conflicts in Lebanon and Syria, I shed light on how and why minority groups decide to join a conflict, stay on the sidelines, go it alone,...