Zeynep K. Korkman

Zeynep Korkman

Zeynep K. Korkman

Associate Professor

Affiliation:

Gender Studies

Office: 7266 Bunche Hall

Email: korkman@ucla.edu

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Biography

I am a feminist scholar whose research explores the gendered relationships between affect, labor, religion, and feminist politics, with a regional focus on Turkey and the broader Muslim Middle East. My research agenda revolves around the affective labors and political genres through which women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) individuals navigate globally inflected social formations such as heteropatriarchy, neoliberal capitalism, religiously accented authoritarianism, secularism, and anti-Muslim racism. This research agenda unfolds along two interconnected tracks. The first focuses on the gendered relationships between affect, labor, and religion. The second details the affective contents and discontents of transnational feminist politics.

My book, Gendered Fortunes: Divination, Precarity, and Affect in Postsecular Turkey, is forthcoming in spring 2023 from Duke University Press. Drawing upon an extensive ethnographic fieldwork supported by cultural analysis and archival research, the book explores the proliferating fortunetelling economy of millennial Turkey as an affective window on the gendered contradictions of neoliberalism, secularism, and religiously accented authoritarianism. In a context wherein women and LGBTIQ people of the Muslim Middle East have been the favorite targets of anti-Muslim discourses cloaked in a veneer of (colonial, pseudo-feminist) concern to “save” them, this book shines a light on the complexities and contradictions at the heart of these major political contestations.

Education

Ph.D. in Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2011
B.A. in Sociology, Bosphorus University, Istanbul, Turkey, 2000

Research Interests

Transnational feminisms; gender, labor, and affect; religion, secularism, and the public sphere; Turkey and the larger Middle East

Selected Publications

Forthcoming   Gendered Fortunes: Divination, Precarity, and Affect in Postsecular Turkey. Book in press to be released in Spring 2023. Duke University Press. Forthcoming   “(Mis)Translations of the Critiques of Anti-Muslim Racism and the Repercussions for Transnational Feminist Solidarities.” Forthcoming in 2023. Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism. 2022    Special Issue: Transnational Feminist Approaches to Anti-Muslim Racism. Coedited with Sherene H. Razack, 20(2). Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism. 2022    “Guest Editors’ Introduction: Transnational Feminist Approaches to Anti-Muslim Racism,” Co-authored with Sherene H. Razack, 20(2): 261-270. Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism.   2022    “Transnational Solidarity?: Academia and the Politics of Knowledge, Translation, and (Im)Mobility.” Feminist Formations. 34(1): 166-190. 2021    “Trans-Secular Incarnations: Destabilizing the (Cis)Gender Politics of Secularism,” 283-304 in Religion, Secularism, and Political Belonging, edited by Leerom Medovoi and Elizabeth Bentley, Duke University Press. 2018    “Clair Obscur/Tereddut,” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 14(2):230-232. 2017    “Grab ‘Em by the Patriarchy.” Co-authored with Salih Can Aciksoz. Anthropology News 58(3): 10-12. 2017    “Castration, Sexual Violence, and Feminist Politics in Post-Coup-Attempt Turkey.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 13(1): 181-185. 2016    “Politics of Intimacy in Turkey: A Distraction from ‘Real’ Politics?” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 12(1):112-121. 2015    “Feeling Labor: Commercial Divination and Commodified Intimacy in Turkey.” Gender and Society 29(2): 195-218. 2015    “Blessing Neoliberalism: Economy, Family, and the Occult in Millennial Turkey.” The Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association 2(2): 335-357. 2014    “Fortunes for Sale: Cultural Politics and Commodification of Culture in Millennial Turkey.” Published online before print in April 15, 2014. European Journal of Cultural Studies 18(3): 319-338. 2014    “Erdogan’s Masculinity and the Language of the Gezi Resistance.” Co-authored with Salih Can Acikoz. Pp. 37-39 in “Resistance Everywhere:” The Gezi Protests and Dissident Visions of Turkey. Edited by Anthony Alessandrini, Nazan Üstündag, and Emrah Yildiz. Tadween Publishing.

Awards

Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellowship, American Association of University Women, 2019 Hellman Fellows Award, University of California Los Angeles, 2019 Research Fellowship, Rethinking Transnational Feminisms Research Group, Humanities Research Institute, University of California, 2017 Faculty Career Development Award, Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, University of California Los Angeles, 2017 Research Fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities/American Research Institute in Turkey, 2016 Research Professorship, Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Institute, University of Arizona, 2015