The Limits of Westernization: A Cultural History of America in Turkey

Perin Gürel

Published by Columbia University Press 2017

The Limits of Westernization

A Cultural History of America in Turkey

Perin Gürel

In the series Columbia Studies in International and Global History

https://doi.org/10.7312/gure18202

Overview
Contents

About this book

The Limits of Westernization analyzes the complex local uses of "the West" to explain how the United States could become both the best and the worst in the Turkish political imagination. Gürel traces how ideas about westernization and America have influenced national history writing and policy making, as well as everyday affects and identities.

Author / Editor information

Perin E. Gürel is assistant professor of American studies and concurrent assistant professor of gender studies at the University of Notre Dame. Her work has appeared in American Quarterly, the Journal of Transnational American Studies, Gastronomica, and the Journal of Turkish Literature.

Reviews

Melani McAlister, author of Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and US. Interests in the Middle East since 1945:
Gurel's book is a savvy and nuanced account of the multiple meanings of America and the West in Turkish culture and politics. This is groundbreaking scholarship that uses culture—from novels to jokes to signs held up at protests—to explore how issues such as Westernization, the decline of the Ottoman empire, and US-Turkish relations were imagined in Turkey. Gurel goes beyond showing the love-hate relationship that Turks had had with the United States; she examines how cultural flows across borders created "vernacular transculturation"—spaces of interchange and transformation. The book is at once humorous and erudite, a pleasure to read and to learn from. An outstanding piece of scholarship.

Brian T. Edwards, author of After the American Century: The Ends of U.S. Culture in the Middle East:
In The Limits of Westernization, Perin Gürel offers a multifaceted approach to interpreting the complex ways in which the United States has figured in a rapidly changing Turkey, using four key lenses through which to tell this story: political history, literary analysis, a discussion of language and humor, and gender and sexuality studies. Taken as a whole, the book illuminates how during the American century, Turkey and the United States were intertwined in ways much greater and more sophisticated than we knew.

Cemil Aydin, author of The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought:
With sophistication and mastery, Gurel offers an original perspective on how the Turkish elite and public have been refashioning images of America for their own political and social purposes for more than a century. The result is an extraordinarily well-written account of the role of culture in the international relations of both Turkey and the United States, allowing us to better grasp and critique the roots of contemporary Turkish and American narratives about identity and politics.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Introduction: Good West, Bad West, Wild West Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Over-Westernization
Chapter One. Narrating the Mandate: Selective Westernization and Official History Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	19
Chapter Two. Allegorizing America: Over-Westernization in the Turkish Novel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	56
Under-Westernization
Chapter Three. Humoring English: Wild Westernization and Anti-American Folklore Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	103
Chapter Four. Figuring Sexualities: Inadequate Westernization and Rights Activism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	147
Postscript. Refiguring Culture in U.S.–Middle East Relations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	187
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	199
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	257

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 256
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 9
- Other: 10 b&w illustrations

eBook

Published: June 12, 2017
ISBN: 9780231543965