Merve Tabur

Academic interests

• Modern Arabic and Turkish Literature
• Global and Arab-Anglophone Fiction
• Middle East Studies
• Futurisms
• Environmental Humanities
• Speculative Fiction
• Anthropocene
• Feminist Theory

Background

Merve Tabur is a scholar of comparative literature and environmental humanities whose research examines representations of environmental destruction in speculative fiction, film, and the visual arts from the Middle East and its Anglophone diasporas. She works with Arabic, Turkish, and Anglophone sources that tackle issues such as climate change, extractivism, fossil fuel industry, urban development, and environmental justice. Her research critically engages with the discourse of the Anthropocene and demonstrates how cultural production in the Middle East challenges and redefines universalist conceptualizations of the term. Her current project as a postdoctoral fellow expands on her previous scholarship and aims to trace the genealogies of Middle Eastern futurisms from a comparative perspective.

Merve has received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Penn State University, where she has taught comparative literature, world literature, English composition, and Arabic language courses. She is a co-creator of the "Unraveling the Anthropocene: Race, Environment, and Pandemic" podcast series, run by the Liberal Arts Collective at Penn State. Merve has also translated academic books and articles on topics such as gender politics, cultural history, and literary theory. 

Education

Ph.D. Pennsylvania State University, Comparative Literature

M.A. Dartmouth College, Comparative Literature

M.A. Boğaziçi University, History

B.A. Boğaziçi University, Sociology and History

Publications

Journal Articles

“A View from the Moon: Allegories of Representation in Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm and H. G. Wells.” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 39 (2019): 63-90.

Select translations

Ertürk, Nergis. Grammatology and Literary Modernity in Turkey. Oxford UP, 2011. [Türkiye’de Gramatoloji ve Edebi Modernlik. İletişim Press, 2018.]

‘Honor’: Crimes, Paradigms and Violence Against Women. Eds. Lynn Welchman  and Sara Hossain. Zed Books, 2005. [Namus. Translated with Ayten Sönmez, Canan Tanır and Sinem Şekercan. BGST Press, 2014.]

McCants, William F. Founding Gods, Inventing Nations: Conquest and Culture Myths from Antiquity to Islam. Princeton UP, 2012. [Kültür Mitleri: Tanrıları Yaratmak, Ulusları İnşa Etmek. İthaki Press, 2012.]

Scott, Joan W. The Politics of the Veil. Princeton UP, 2010. [Örtünmenin Siyaseti. Boğaziçi UP, 2012.]