Abstract
Throughout the 20th century, various migration movements have transformed not only European cultures and societies but also European cinema. Migration, identity politics and cultural encounters of various kinds have emerged as prominent themes in European cinemas. Filmmakers with a migratory background have played a pivotal role in bringing these themes to public attention. They have also introduced new aesthetic and narrative forms which have influenced well-established cinematic traditions, thereby creating a culturally hybrid diasporic and transnational cinema.
This dissertation takes a comparative approach to the representation of Turkish migrants and the Turkish diaspora in Germany in German, Turkish German and Turkish cinema. While there is already a considerable amount of scholarly literature on the representation of Turkish guest-workers and Turkish diaspora culture in German cinema, a critical analysis of Turkish migration in Turkish cinema is still outstanding. My thesis seeks to address this gap by offering an important complementary vantage point that also includes Turkish cinema.
By drawing on theories of cultural hybridity, I invoke a critical framework that has hitherto not been systematically applied to the corpus of films under investigation and that, therefore, has the capacity to yield original insights into the filmic construction of migrant and diasporic identities. I argue that German, Turkish German and Turkish cinemas exhibit three distinctive perspectives when depicting Turkish migrants and address issues of cultural hybridity in different ways.
This study combines a literature review and the exploration of relevant theoretical concepts with a contextual and textual analysis of selected films. The dissertation’s comparative approach, which focuses on the cinema of the receiving country, the cinema of the sending country, and transnational Turkish German cinema, seeks to make an original contribution to the existing body of scholarship on filmic representations of Turkish migration into Germany in these (trans)national film cultures.
This dissertation takes a comparative approach to the representation of Turkish migrants and the Turkish diaspora in Germany in German, Turkish German and Turkish cinema. While there is already a considerable amount of scholarly literature on the representation of Turkish guest-workers and Turkish diaspora culture in German cinema, a critical analysis of Turkish migration in Turkish cinema is still outstanding. My thesis seeks to address this gap by offering an important complementary vantage point that also includes Turkish cinema.
By drawing on theories of cultural hybridity, I invoke a critical framework that has hitherto not been systematically applied to the corpus of films under investigation and that, therefore, has the capacity to yield original insights into the filmic construction of migrant and diasporic identities. I argue that German, Turkish German and Turkish cinemas exhibit three distinctive perspectives when depicting Turkish migrants and address issues of cultural hybridity in different ways.
This study combines a literature review and the exploration of relevant theoretical concepts with a contextual and textual analysis of selected films. The dissertation’s comparative approach, which focuses on the cinema of the receiving country, the cinema of the sending country, and transnational Turkish German cinema, seeks to make an original contribution to the existing body of scholarship on filmic representations of Turkish migration into Germany in these (trans)national film cultures.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Qualification | Ph.D. |
| Award date | 1 Dec 2017 |
| Publication status | Unpublished - 2017 |
