Mevsim Normalleri (Yekta Kopan)
["Mevsim Normalleri"ni, Yekta Kopan'ın 2001 yılında Can Yayınları'ndan çıkan ve 2002 Sait Faik Hikaye Armağanı ödülünü kazanan Aşk Mutfağından Yalnızlık Tarifleri isimli kitabında bulabilirsiniz]

1. Yekta Kopan’ın hikayesi, haber müdürünün sözleri ile başlamaktadır. Bu sözler hikayeye ve okuyucunun hikayeyi anlamasına nasıl yön vermektedir?
2. Hikayedeki anlatıcının özelliği nedir? Kopan’ın böylesi bir anlatıcı seçmesindeki neden(ler) ne olabilir? Yorumlayınız.
3. Yekta Kopan’ın hikayesinde okuyucu nasıl konumlandırılmıştır? Hikaye ve okuyucu arasındaki ilişkiyi hikayeyi okurken kendinizi gözlemleyerek değerlendiriniz. Daha sonra sınıftaki arkadaşlarınıza onların gözlemlerinin ne olduğunu sorarak karşılaştırma yapınız.
4. Hikayedeki anlatıcının kadına yaklaşımını değerlendiriniz.
5. Kopan, hikayesine neden “Mevsim Normalleri” ismini vermiş olabilir? Yorumlayınız.
6. “Sefalıköy” kasabasının adına, hikaye içinde özel bir anlam yükleyebilir miyiz?
7. Sefalıköy kasabası halkı hikayede neyi temsil etmektedir? Davranışlarının ardında hangi nedenler yatmaktadır? Kasaba halkı size neyi anlatmaktadır?
8. Hikayenin ilk paragraflarında rastladığımız hemşire ile ilgili anlatımlar medyanın kullandığı teknikleri anlamamıza nasıl yardımcı oluyor. Televizyonda ya da diğer medya metinlerinde hikayedekine benzer örnekler bulabilir misiniz? Bulduğunuz örnekleri arkadaşlarınızla tartışın.
9. “Mevsim Normalleri”nin diğer bölümlerini de dikkatle inceleyerek medyanın haber hazırlarken kullandığı teknikleri bulunuz. Bu tekniklerin arkasındaki anlamları ve seyircinin üzerindeki olası etkilerini tartışınız. Sizce her bir seyirci aynı şekilde etkilenebilir mi? Nedenleri tartışınız.

© Ali Nihat Eken, İstanbul, Ekim 2009
(Lütfen, kaynak göstererek kullanınız)

Yekta Kopan’ın internet sitesi / Yekta Kopan’ın Can Yayınları’ndaki internet sitesi / Yekta Kopan’ın NTV’deki Gece ve Gündüz Programı / Yekta Kopan’ın NTV’deki Programının Video Galerisi /

“Kaset” (Murathan Mungan, 2003)
[Bu hikaye, 2009 yılında Murathan Mungan'ın "Eldivenler, Hikayeler" isimli kitabında yayınlanmıştır. Metis Yayınevi. Yanda gördüğünüz kapak resmi Arzu Başaran'a aittir.]

1. Hikayenin ilk paragrafında Mungan’ın kullandığı zıtlıklar hikayeye nasıl katkıda bulunmaktadır?
2. Kasetin dökümünü yapan Sibel’in bu işi yaparken yaşadığı duygu değişikliklerini örneklendiriniz. Bu değişiklikleri yazar bize hangi yollarla hissettiriyor?
3. Kaset dökümü yapmanın bu hikayedeki sembolik anlamı nedir?
4. Kasetteki “ses” neden bu kadar önemlidir? Neyi temsil eder?
5. Mungan, Sibel yoluyla ötekileştirme konusunda bizlere ne söylemektedir? Sibel, arkadaşını neden ve nasıl ötekileştirmektedir?
6. Sibel’in arkadaşını “normalleştirme” çabalarını anlatan ifadeleri bulunuz? Bunu neden yapmakatadır?
7. Sibel’in annesinin sözlerini neden önemsemek zorundayız? Bu sözler bize ne anlatmaktadır?
8. Hikayede aydın olma nasıl tanımlanmaktadır? Yorumlayınız.
9. Hikayede aile kavramı nasıl tarif edilmektedir? Katılıyor musunuz? Neden?
10. Murathan Mungan’ın hikayesinde bir yolculuk anlatıldığını kabul edersek, bu yolculuk Sibel ve sizin için ne anlam ifade eder? Sibel ve siz yolculuğun sonunda ne bulursunuz? Sizce yolculuk bitmiş midir? Sibel için bitmiş midir? Ya sizin için?
11. Mungan, hikayesinde neden “1. tekil anlatıcı” kullanmamış olabilir? Kullansaydı hikayede sizce nasıl bir farklılık olurdu?
12. Mungan’ın hikayesi, içinde yaşadığınız toplumu ne açıdan anlatmakta ve eleştirmektedir?

© Ali Nihat Eken, İstanbul, Ekim 2009

Representations of Turkish Immigrants in Turkish-German Cinema: Tevfik Baser’s 40 Square Meters of Germany and Fatih Akin’s Head-On

Author: Ali Nihat Eken
Publisher: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller
Paperback, 80 pages
Language: English
ISBN-10: 363917416X
ISBN-13: 978-3639174168

Since their arrival into Germany in the 1960s, Turkish immigrants have always drawn the attention of filmmakers. The German immigrant cinema of the 1970s and 1980s focused on the harsh living and working conditions of these immigrants; however, it very often depicted immigrants in one-dimensional roles. Since the mid-1990s, however, there has been a change in the portrayals of Turkish immigrants in a new wave of films made by young German-Turkish filmmakers challenging cultural stereotypes about Turks. This book examines one film from the earlier phase of migrant cinema – Tevfik Baser’s 40 Square Meters of Germany (1986) and one film from the most recent phase – Fatih Akin’s Head-On (2004) and aims to demonstrate how Turkish immigrants are represented in these films and whether the cinematic representations of the Turkish immigrants have changed over the years.

To buy the book: Amazon USA / Amazon UK

Turkish Short Fiction in the Classroom:
Study Questions for Sevgi Soysal’s “Hanife”

Sevgi Soysal (1936-1976)
Turkish short story writer and novelist

The questions below are based on the English translation of “Hanife” that first appeared in Southern Humanities Review, Vol. XXVI, no. 2 (Spring 1992), pp. 145-152.

The same version is also available in “Short Stories by Turkish Women Writers” (1988, 1994) Translated by Nilüfer Mizanoğlu Reddy.
Publisher: Indiana University Turkish Studies.

1. Comment on Sevgi Soysal’s use of setting in the first paragraph. How does it contribute to our understanding of the story?
2. What is the reason for the emphasis on Hanife’s fists in the first paragraph?
3. What link(s) can you establish between Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” and Hanife as depicted in the first two paragraphs?
4. How does the first paragraph introduce the theme of gender roles? Find other examples of gender roles in the rest of the story.
5. Comment on Sevgi Soysal’s use of narrative voices in “Hanife”. How does the author’s technique affect our understanding of the story?
6. Comment on Sevgi Soysal’s use of “darkness” and “light” in the first two paragraphs.
7. Discuss the significance of guns as depicted in the second paragraph.
8. What is the significance of the old woman’s song?
9. How do women and children react to Hanife’s death? What makes them act in the way they do?
10. Identify how Sevgi Soysal depicts the passing of time in the first three paragraphs.
11. What is the function of the poplar tree in the story?
12. What does “Ahmet Aga” represent in the story?
13. At the end of the fifth paragraph, the narrator says that honor is “like the sky”? Why?
14. What is the significance of Esma’s old shack in the story?
15. Make a list of the adjectives, nouns and noun phrases used for describing Hanife. What do they reveal about the society in which Hanife lives?
16. What is the connection between “land” and “women” in the story?
17. What does the story tell you about women and economic (in)dependence?
18. Do you think that women are the only victims in the story? What about men? Would you call them victims as well?
19. Essay Topic: In “Who is who in contemporary women’s writing” (2001), Jane Eldridge Miller writes that Sevgi Soysal’s characters are “rebels, usually from provincial backgrounds, trying to find solutions to personal problems which are connected to larger social issues” (p. 306). In light of this quotation, discuss whether you would call Hanife a rebel.

© Ali Nihat Eken, İstanbul, June 2009
Useful link: Study Questions for “Bliss”

Study Questions for “The Lottery” (Shirley Jackson, 1948)

1. What is the significance of choosing a small town as the setting for “The Lottery”? How is it described in the opening paragraph of the story? Why is it unnamed?
2. What could be the significance of the summer season for the story? What is the significance of the date “June 27th”? [Suggested text: J. Yarmove's Jackson's "The lottery". Explicator (1994), 52, 242-245]
3. How does Shirley Jackson prepare the reader for the main theme of the story in the second and the third paragraphs? For example, what could be the reason for an emphasis on the name “Delacroix”? What could Bobby Martin’s surname signify? [Suggested reading: Helen E. Nebeker's "The Lottery": Symbolic Tour de Force in American Literature, Mar1974, Vol. 46 Issue 1]
4. What is the symbolic value of the stones?
5. What do Mr. Summers, Mr. Graves and Mr. Martin represent in the story?
6. Discuss the symbolic value of the three legged-stool and the black box?
7. What does Old Man Warner represent in the story?
8. What is the significance of the surname “Hutchinson”?
9. What does the lottery mean to the townspeople in the story? Do they all have the same reaction? Do they question their obedience? Why? Why not? Provide examples.
10. What could be the significance of the 3rd person narration in “The Lottery”? What could be the impact of this on the readers?
11. What does the story reveal about the place of men and women in this small town? Give specific examples from the story
12. What critique of capitalism does the story seem to be offering?
13. What does the story’s title reveal about our everyday lives?
14. What does the story reveal about human nature?
15. What makes the ending of the story so shocking?
16. Identify examples of irony in the story and discuss them.
17. Read Shirley Jackson’s husband Stanley Edgar Hyman’s comment on Jackson and discuss how “The Lottery” reflects the historical context of its times: “Her fierce visions of dissociation and madness, of alienation and withdrawal, of cruelty and terror, have been taken to be personal, even neurotic, fantasies.  Quite the reverse: they are a sensitive and faithful anatomy of our times, fitting symbols for our distressing world of the concentration camp and the Bomb.” [as cited in Joan Wylie Hall's Fallen Eden in Shirley Jackson's The Road Through The Wall, REN, 46.4, Summer 1994, p. 265]

© Ali Nihat Eken, İstanbul, May 2009

Study Questions for Battle Royal (Ralph Ellison, 1952)

1. What is the significance of the first person narration in Ralp Ellison’s “Battle Royal”?
2. Why does the narrator need to first discover that he is an invisible man in order to understand who he is?
3. What is the significance of the grandfather’s dying speech? Why does he call himself a traitor and a spy in the enemy’s country?
4. Comment on the significance of the circus imagery as used in the story. Give examples.
5. In “Battle Royal”, animal imagery is used very often. Identify the references to animals in the story (for example, “lion”, “baboon”, “bird”, “panda”, “cottonmouth”, “wolf”, “crab”, “rat”…) and discuss how they contribute to the story.
6. Examine the references to the “magnificent blonde” in the story. What animal imagery is used in her portrayal? What does she mean to the white audience? What does she mean to the black boys taking part in the battle royal? How do the black boys react to her and why?
7. Examine the narrator’s reactions towards the “magnificent blonde”. Give examples.
8. What is the resemblance between the white female body and the black male bodies as depicted in the story?
9. Why do you think there is always an emphasis on “blindness” in the story? Provide examples.
10. What is the significance of Booker T. Washington in the story?
11. What is the symbolic value of the battle royal?
12. What could be the significance of the smoky atmosphere in the hall where the battle royal takes place?
13. What is the significance of the fight on an electrified rug?
14. How does Ellison’s story challenge the respectability of the white Southern male?
15. At the end of the story, the narrator dreams that he is at a circus with his grandfather: why does the grandfather refuse to laugh at the clowns?
16. Comment on the following quote from the story: “To Whom It May Concern… Keep This Nigger-Boy Running”.
17. What do you think about the ending of the story? To what extent do you think the narrator has gained maturity?
18. Examine the theme of “American Dream” in the story.
19. How does the story define the concept of “success”?

© Ali Nihat Eken, İstanbul, May 2009.
Useful links: Ralph Ellison’s A Party Down At The Square / An Interview with Ellison /

APA Style: How to cite an audio podcast in your references list

The World in Alice Walker’s Eye (2006, April 10). School of Languages. Podcast retrieved http://sl.sabanciuniv.edu/eng/?PodCast/PodCasts.php

APA Style: How to cite a blog post in your references list

Eken, A. N. (2007, August 27). Representations in the media: Messages and values. Message posted to http://alinihatekenblog.wordpress.com/2007/08/21/representations-in-the-media-messages-and-values/

Study Questions for George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four

Introduction to the novel

Before you read the novel, do some research about George Orwell and familiarize yourself with his life and his major work. Also find out what impact the historical, social and cultural settings of his times might have had on Orwell’s work. (Suggested links: BBC Historic Figures / The Orwell Prize: Biography / Voice of A Lon Generation / YouTube: A Life in Pictures / Britannica / )

Read George Orwell’s famous essay “Why I write” and familiarize yourself with Orwell’s motives for writing.

Examine the following concepts: “utopia” and “dystopia”, and find out in what way(s) they can be related to George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four”.

Find different definitions of “totalitarianism” and examine what is common and what is not in these definitions. Identify characteristics of a totalitarian system of political rule.

According to Herbert Marcuse, the famous Frankfurt School philosopher, liberal democracies “exhibit totalitarian features” (Heywood, 2003, Political Ideologies, p. 227). Find out why he thinks so and discuss to what extent you agree with his view.

Coming Up…..  Part I

Discussion Questions for “Milk”

1. Examine the images and the newspaper articles used in the film’s title sequence. What do they reveal about the issues depicted in the film?
2. Examine the banners and posters used in the demonstrations and comment on how these form a contrast to the newspapers articles shown in the title sequence. What does such a contrast reveal about how sexual orientation is perceived differently?
3. What is the significance of the Castro both for straight and gay people?
4. What does the protesting of Coors beer reveal about the gay community as depicted in the film?
5. In what ways is Milk’s politics different from that of the owner of the Advocate magazine?
6. Why does Milk ask his staff not to use the lift but the stairs instead in the City Hall?
7. What do you think Puccini’s Tosca signifies in the film?
8. Comment on the following quotes from the film: “I am not a candidate; I am part of a movement. The movement is the candidate.” /“A homosexual with power. That’s scary.” /“I know you’re angry! I’m angry!” / “Privacy is the enemy.”
9. Comment on Milk’s pinning the death threat letter on the fridge. Why is his act symbolic?
10. Chris Jones from Esquire states that Milk lived a theatrical life and therefore that his being killed alone in an office could be quite significant. What could be the reason(s) for Jones’s argument?
11. Why does Milk call the Democratic Party “the Machine”?
12. What does the film reveal about the relationship between politics, economic power and the gay movement?

© Ali Nihat Eken, İstanbul, March 2008.

Useful links: About Harvey Milk /

]]> http://alinihatekenblog.wordpress.com/2009/03/29/study-questions-for-milk-gus-van-sant-2008/feed/ 0 Ali Nihat Eken milktheatre http://alinihatekenblog.wordpress.com/2009/03/06/study-guide-for-the-curious-case-of-benjamin-button-f-scott-fitzgerald-1922/ http://alinihatekenblog.wordpress.com/2009/03/06/study-guide-for-the-curious-case-of-benjamin-button-f-scott-fitzgerald-1922/#comments Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:37:31 +0000 Ali Nihat Eken http://alinihatekenblog.wordpress.com/?p=833 ]]>

Study Guide for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1922)

1. How does Benjamin’s aging in reverse help you understand the story, the issues it deals with, and its characters?
2. What does the story reveal about the concept of beauty? You may like to study the portrayals of Hildegarde Button and Benjamin Button.
3. Identify and comment on how men and women are positioned in the story.
4. Find one example which shows how gender is socially constructed.
5. Comment on how “age” and “aging” are defined in the story. Do you think they are still defined in the same way in the contemporary world? Why? Why not?
6. What does the story reveal about class and race issues? Give examples.
7. Comment on the portrayal of journalism in the story? How similar is it to today’s journalism?
8. Why does the story always have an emphasis on “concealing” or “hiding”? What could this tell you about the societal norms?
9. In what ways would you call Benjamin’s being perceived as a source of shame or a threat symbolic? What would his otherness suggest about his society’s attitude toward him?
10. In what ways would you call the story a social satire?

© Ali Nihat Eken, Istanbul, March 2009

Useful links: David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button / A Brief Life of Fitzgerald /

Discussion Questions for  The Celluloid Closet (Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Freidman, 1995 – Based on Vito Russo’s book)

1. Comment on the significance of the title.
2. Anneke Smelik (Film Studies, Hill & Gibson, 2000) calls Vito Russo’s book “The Celluloid Closet” (which the documentary is based on) an archelogical project. Discuss Smelik’s claim in relation to the documentary.
3. List some of the characteristics of the onscreen portrayals of homosexuality examined in the opening moments of “The Celluloid Closet” and discuss in what ways these portrayals can affect audiences’ view of homosexuality.
4. Why is Hollywood described as “that great maker of myths”?
5. What is  actor/screenwriter Harvey Fierstein’s explanation of the need for arts? Why does he say say that he looked for gay images on screen when he was young?
6. What is film historian Richard Dyer’s definition of identity?
7. Give examples of how homosexuality was represented by early Hollywood.
8. List some of the themes restricted in American film as a result of the Production Code.
9. Give examples of how Hollywood got around the Production Code by referring to films such as “Rebecca” (1940), “The Maltese Falcon” (1941), and “Rope” (1948).
10. What does “The Celluloid Closet” tell us about how masculinity was perceived in 1950’s America?
11. Comment on how the theme of homosexuality is encoded in the following films: “Tea & Sympathy”, “Rebel without a cause” (1955), “Ben-Hur” (1959), “Calamity Jane” (1953), “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1953), “Lover Come Back” (1946), “Some Like it Hot” (1959), “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (1958), and “Suddenly Last Summer” (1959).
12. Discuss the importance of the following quotation from the film: “All minority audiences watch movies with hope”.
13. Comment on Martha’s definition of herself in “The Children’s Hour” (1962).
14. What images of homosexuality were available in films like “Fox” and “The Detective” in the 1960s ?
15. How does screenwriter Mart Crowley, explain the “self-deprecating humor” in  “The Boys in the Band” (1970)?
16. What was special about the representations of homosexuality in “Cabaret” (1972) and “Car Wash” (1976)?
17. How was homosexuality represented in films like “Night Shift” (1982) and “Teen Wolf” (1986)?
18. Why were there protests against the movie “Cruising” (1981)?
19. Why did Daniel Melnick find the movie “Making Love” (1982) very hard to cast? Why does Michale Ontkean react to a man playing a gay role although he has played such a role before?
20. How does Susan Sarandon explain men’s feeling not threatened by girly bonding in film? Do you agree with her?
21. What does Tom Hanks think about his presence as a gay character in “Philadelphia” (1993)?
22. What does the documentary tell you about the most recent representations of homosexuality?
23. What is your evaluation of the arguments presented in the documentary?
24. To what extent and in what way(s) would you call “The Celluloid Closet” a political text?

© Ali Nihat Eken, Istanbul, February 2009

Discussion Questions for Frank O’Connor’s “My Oedipus Complex” (1950)

1. Why is the story told from a child-narrator’s point of view? What is the impact of narrative voice on the story and on your response to the story?
2. Why do you think Frank O’Connor prefers to integrate humor into the story?
3. Make a comparison between Larry’s image of himself, his father and his mother at the beginning of the story and at the end of the story.
4. Discuss the symbolic significance of the war imagery in the story.
5. Discuss the symbolic significance of the enemy imagery in the story.
6. What is your understanding of the adult world in “My Oedipus Complex” in relation to Larry’s world?
7. In his depiction of Larry’s relationship with his mother and father, discuss how Frank O’Connor manages to demonstrate the shifts in mood in his story.
8. In relation to the following quotation from the story, discuss Larry’s perception of God: “I began to think that God wasn’t quite what he was cracked up to be.” (You can find other references to God in the story to justify your view)
9. According to Kate Murphy (1990), there are two types of world in Frank O’Connor’s stories: “the natural or normal worlds through which every person successively progresses in the process of growing up, and a number of ‘unnatural’ worlds which the individual elects or in which he arbitrarily finds himself” (p. 313).   Discuss Murphy’s argument in relation to Frank O’Connor’s “My Oedipus Complex”. [Suggested reading: “Grappling with the world” By: Murphy, K.. Twentieth Century Literature, Fall90, Vol. 36 Issue 3, pp. 310-343]
10. Comment on the following quotation: “I could not help feeling sorry for Father. I had been through it all myself, and even at that age I was magnanimous.”
11. What is the significance of the model railway at the end of the story?
12. According to Austrian physician Sigmund Freud, personality develops in childhood through a number of stages, which can be called “Freud’s Stages of Personality Development.” Do some research to find out what these stages are, at what age each stage occurs, what the characteristics of each stage of personality development are, and how fixation or lack of resolution in one stage will affect the child and lead to behavioral disorders in his/her adult life.
13. Discuss to what extent Frank O’Connor’s story fits Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex.

© Ali Nihat Eken, Istanbul, January 2009

Useful links: About Frank O’Connor / Frank O’Connor- Audio-Visual /

Buy the book here /