Description:

THIS EVENT IS POSTPONED AT THIS TIME. 

The conference seeks to engage with African American writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin’s extended stays in Istanbul between 1961 and 1971, what Magdalena J. Zaborowska calls in her important study of the topic his “Turkish decade.” In Turkey and the U.S. as elsewhere, this decade was a period of political unrest, cultural efflorescence, rising social movements, and geopolitical conflict in the context of the Cold War and decolonization. Focusing on Baldwin’s time in Istanbul, we invite papers that shed light on the cultural/political connections and contradictions between and across Turkey and the U.S. during this period.