İngiliz Dili Eğitimi

 “History or Story? Remembering and Rewriting the Past”

This talk examines how Yuva (2012; originally Home, a novel written in English by Toni Morrison and later translated into Turkish) and Cümbezin Kızı (2023, a novel originally written in Turkish by Ülkü Demiray) use storytelling to reconstruct the past by weaving together memory, place, and identity, demonstrating how cultural memory transforms history into a dynamic and continually renegotiated process shaped by lived experience.

Date: Friday, February 13, 2026

Time: 1:00 – 2:00 PM (U.S. Central Time)

          22:00 – 23:00 (İstanbul,Turkey)

Zoom: https://uwmadison.zoom.us/meetings/91994097174/invitations?signature=VOb_cRaG-8cv7O7kUavYzkatcUuSd5GY8u-yjGTE_cM

About the Talk: This talk explores the tension between history and story by examining how storytelling becomes a powerful means of remembering and rewriting the past in Yuva (2012) and Cümbezin Kızı (2023). Storytelling in both novels moves beyond the passive transmission of historical facts and instead actively reconstructs the past by intertwining memory, place, and identity. Yuva focuses on African American experiences of trauma, belonging, and familial memory, while Cümbezin Kızı depicts British colonial Cyprus to reveal processes of social division and gendered marginalization. By foregrounding everyday narratives and lived experiences, the novels demonstrate how cultural memory transforms history into a dynamic, collective, and continually renegotiated process.

About the Speaker: Tuba Baykara is an Assistant Professor of English Language Teaching at Nevşehir Hacı Bektaş Veli University and a Visiting Scholar in the Department of African American Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her scholarship primarily focuses on African American drama, examining intersections of race, gender, discrimination, cultural identity, and representation in contemporary Black theatre. https://africanamericanstudies.wisc.edu/international-scholars/