Donia Human Rights Roundtable | Gender and Sexual Rights as Human Rights in Contemporary Turkey: Diverse Feminist Perspectives

Seda Saluk, PhD Assistant Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Michigan; Özlem Göner, PhD Associate Professor, Sociology and Anthropology, College of Staten Island, and Middle Eastern Studies, Graduate Center of the City University of New York; Aslı Zengin, PhD Assistant Professor, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Rutgers University; Özge Savaş, PhD. Assistant Professor, Psychology, College of the Holy Cross

Attend in person or via Zoom. Zoom registration at https://myumi.ch/EreDx

This interdisciplinary roundtable will discuss ongoing efforts to defend gender and sexual rights as human rights in Turkey. Speakers will address how scholars and activists document structural and everyday forms of violence directed towards historically marginalized groups, as well as the emergent justice-seeking struggles to challenge and dismantle this violence.

CHAIR:

Seda Saluk, PhD
Assistant Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Michigan

Seda Saluk is a feminist anthropologist working at the intersection of medical anthropology, science and technology studies, and Middle East studies. Her research focuses on the politics and ethics of medical technologies through the lenses of gender, race, and ethnicity. Her current book project, Monitoring Reproduction: Surveillance, Labor, and Care in Turkey, investigates the complexities of reproductive surveillance against the backdrop of demographic changes.

PANELISTS:

Özlem Göner, PhD
Associate Professor, Sociology and Anthropology, College of Staten Island, and Middle
Eastern Studies, Graduate Center of the City University of New York

Özlem Göner is a sociologist specializing in social movements, with attention to inter-sectional movements of the oppressed, feminist theory and movements, racial and ethnic relations, and global capitalism. Her book, Turkish National Identity and its Outsiders: Memories of State Violence in Dersim, was published in 2017 by Routledge. She has written academic and popular journal articles on the themes of state violence, social movements, gender and intersectionality, and anti-colonial self-determination.

Aslı Zengin, PhD
Assistant Professor, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Rutgers University

Aslı Zengin is an anthropologist whose research lies at the intersection of ethnography of trans, queer, sex worker and sex/gender transgressive lives; scientific and legal regimes of sex, gender and sexuality; critical studies of violence and sovereignty; and death, funerals, cemeteries and afterlives. Her most recent book, Violent Intimacies: The Trans Everyday and the (Un)Making of an Urban World, was published in 2023 by Duke University Press. The book traces how trans people in Turkey creatively negotiate and resist everyday cisheteronormative violence.

DISCUSSANT:
Özge Savaş, PhD.
Assistant Professor, Psychology, College of the Holy Cross

Özge Savaş is a critical and applied social psychologist. She works with historically and systemically disadvantaged and marginalized individuals and communities, combining decolonial and intersectional feminist theories in explaining how systems of oppression are maintained. She examines the role of stigma, stereotypes, and prejudice in intergroup conflict.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at wesleywr@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.