Savcı will speak about her book Queer in Translation, which draws on the case of Turkey’s 16 years of AKP governance to intervene in Queer Studies’ separate — indeed, diagonically opposed — approaches to neoliberalism and to Islam. She theorizes “neoliberal Islam” as a unique regime that brings together economic and religious moralities to deploy marginality onto ever-expanding populations instead of concentrating it in the lower echelons of society, and she suggests that sexual liberation movements are the most productive places from which to theorize neoliberal Islam, as well as to imagine resistances to it. After an initial presentation, Savcı will then be in conversation with Mayanthi Fernando (UCSC).

This colloquium is a joint event with the Center for the Middle East and North Africa (CMENA).

RSVP by 11 AM on Wednesday, May 12th; you will receive the Zoom link and password at 11:30 AM the day of the colloquium.

Evren Savcı is Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Yale University. Her first book Queer in Translation: Sexual Politics under Neoliberal Islam (2021, Duke University Press) analyzes sexual politics under contemporary Turkey’s AKP regime with an eye to the travel and translation of sexual political vocabulary. Her second book project, tentatively entitled Failures of Modernization: Polygamy, Islamic Matrimony and Cousin Marriages in the Turkish Republic, turns to those sexual practices that were deemed “uncivilized” and either heavily discouraged or outlawed by the Turkish Republic. Savcı’s work on the intersections of language, knowledge, sexual politics, neoliberalism, and religion has appeared in Journal of Marriage and Family; Ethnography; Sexualities; Political Power and Social Theory; Theory & Event; Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion; GLQ, and in several edited collections.

The Center for Cultural Studies hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work by faculty and visitors. We gather online at 12:10 PM, with presentations beginning at 12:15 PM.

Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.

*2020-2021 colloquia will be held virtually until further notice. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own coffee, tea, and cookies to the session.