Invitation to Defense of Esin Akkaya
The Institute for Education in the Arts of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna kindly invites you to the Defense of Esin Akkaya's dissertation project Turkish labour migration in the context of satirical reflection.
The Defense Committee is made up of: Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Sabeth Buchmann (chair), Univ.-Prof. Dr. Elke Gaugele (1st supervisor), A.o. Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Gisela Procháska-Eisl (2nd supervisor, University of Vienna), and Univ.- Prof. Dr. Erol Yıldız (external appraiser, University of Innsbruck).
The dissertation examines the image of immigrant workers in Turkish satirical publications, which represent a significant segment of popular culture in Turkey. Stereotypical representa¬tions of immigrant workers in caricatures in the time frame of 1955 to 1995 are analysed. In an in-depth survey, about 6,500 issues of ten satirical publications and about 2,000 caricatures were covered, which have labour migration in and from Turkey as a subject. The paper positions itself at the intersection between Visual Cultural Studies (an analysis of caricatures regarding the creation of stereotypes) and Migration Studies. It aims to make a contribution to the study of the media representations of migration.
After presenting the research approach, and important political and historical frameworks of migration movements in and from Turkey, the main thematic points and formal forms of re-presentation in caricatures dealing with Turkish internal and external migration are elaborated in two main chapters. In both these areas, the subjects move in a tense relationship between the traditional, rural culture of their origins and urban or “Western”, European lifestyles.
The stereotypical images of the migrants mostly contain symbolic attributes of the societies they originate from, as well as of the societies they moved to. In the course of the decades, a growing alienation and rising tensions in the relationship between the long established inhabitants of big Turkish cities (whose point of view is mostly presented in the satirical publica¬tions) and the migrants in and out of the countries frontiers becomes apparent in the central characters (like the Almancı and the Maganda ) . Although most of the main figures in migration-caricatures are male, another part of this paper focuses on the status and characteristic elements of the portrayal of women in the context of migration.
Please join us for the defense presentation. The event will take place online.
Zoom Meeting Link: https://akbild-ac-at.zoom.us/j/5233479357
We are looking forward to welcoming you to the defense.