News and events

News

The Senior Project introductory meeting for students enrolling in ELIT 490 in Spring 2027 will take place on Thursday, 15 October 2026 at 17.30 in V-02.

Timothy Wright’s book Mutant City: Johannesburg Imaginaries in Twenty-First Century Speculative Film and Fiction was published by Wits University Press in October 2026. Read a description of the book here.

Jonathan Williams’s book Melancholic Life: Literary Expression and the Experience of History from Burton to Keats was published by Bloomsbury in December 2025. Read a description of the book here.

October 2025. Ivana Bičak has been awarded the Herzog August Bibliothek three-month research fellowship for Summer 2026 for her project titled ‘Beast now with Beast ’gan War:’ The Fall of Nature in John Milton’s Paradise Lost in the Continental Context.

2 October 2025, 17:30. Room EB203. Prof. Mandy Green (Durham University), “Trouble in Paradise? Milton’s Adam and Eve.”

June 2025. Ivana Bičak was awarded the Durham Collections Fellowship. Click here for the details.

April 2025. Atti Viragh’s coedited essay anthology, Mind and Embodiment in Late Victorian Literature, is published by Edinburgh University Press.

Events

The Department of English Language and Literature regularly hosts visiting speakers. Most are academics who come to present and discuss their latest research, but we have also invited speakers from beyond the academic world, such as journalist Hümeyra Pamuk and photographer Ümit Bektaş (R), who came from Reuters News Agency to discuss the relation of image and text with students taking an elective in ‘Literature and Photography.’

 

Bilkent Philosophy and Literature Colloquia (2021-2025)

Spring 2025 Events

• Discussion with the author. Wednesday 29 January, 17:30 (Zoom). Ruth Murphy (Sheffield): “Let Me Look Again: The Moral Philosophy and Literature Debate at 40“.
• Invited talk. Wednesday 19 March, 17:30 (Zoom). Sarah Ellison, “True Histories and Literary Celebrity: Charlotte Brontë and Josiah Henson”.
• Book launch. Wednesday 16 April 2025, 17:30. A roundtable conversation with the editors and contributors to Mind and Embodiment in Late Victorian Literature. With Atti Viragh (Bilkent), Marion Thain (Edinburgh), Pamela Gilbert (Florida), Amanda Paxton (Trent), and Colton Valentine (Harvard).

Fall 2024 Events

• Invited talk. Thursday 10 October, 18:00 (Zoom). Erin Greer (Dallas): “The Ideal of Conversation in Fiction, Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Criticism.”
• Book series launch. Thursday 14 November, 17:30 (Zoom). Literature and Philosophy in Nineteenth-Century British Culture (Routledge). A roundtable conversation with the editors. With Monika Class (Lund), Cian Duffy (Lund), Peter Garratt (Durham), Andrea Selleri (Bilkent) and Giles Whiteley (Stockholm).
• Discussion with the author. Wednesday 11 December, 17:30 (Zoom). Aaron Hanlon, ‘Explanation beyond Interpretation’, Philosophy and Literature 48.1 (April 2024): 165-184.

Spring 2024 Events

• Eva Dadlez (University of Central Oklahoma): “Just Kidding: The Problem of Humor and Moral Evaluation.” 21 March 2024, 17:30 (Zoom).
• Elisabeth Camp (Rutgers University): “Stories and Selves: A Twisted Love Story about the Meaning of Life.” 25 April 2024, 17:30 (Zoom).
• Derek Matravers (Open University): “Representations and Face-to-Face Encounters: Why They Matter for the Philosophy of Fiction.” 9 May 2024, 17:30 (Room H-232).
• Patrick Colm Hogan (University of Connecticut), “Gendered Virtues, but without the Gender: On Empathy, Shame, and Attachment Care.” 23 May 2024, 17:30 (Zoom).

Fall 2023 Events

• Anna Christina Ribeiro (Texas Tech University): “Thinking with Poetry.” 5 October 2023, 17:30 (Zoom).
• Jeanne-Marie Jackson (Johns Hopkins University): “Objectivity as Prophecy: The Long View from West Africa in 1903.” 2 November 2023, 17:30 (Zoom).
• Danila Sokolov (University of Iceland): “Beyond Matter: Lyric, Metaphysics, Form.” 14 December 2023, 17:30 (Zoom).

Spring 2023 Events

• David S. Coombs (Clemson University): “Walter Pater and Literature as a Sensory Experience”. 1 March 2023.
• Daniel Katz (University of Warwick): “Good Sameness: Ben Lerner’s Song of the Fungible.” 5 April 2023.
• Eileen John (University of Warwick): “Moby-Dick and Money as an Ethical Test.” 10 May 2023.

Fall 2022 Events

• Iris Vidmar Jovanović (University of Rijeka): “From Banned to Burnt for the Public Good: On the (Im)morality of Literature”. 12 October 2022. Abstract
• C. Thi Nguyen (University of Utah): “Art as a Shelter from Science”. 28 October 2022. Abstract
• Timothy Bewes (Brown University): “Free Indirect: The Novel in a Postfictional Age”. 9 December 2022.

Spring 2022 Events

• Joshua Gang: “Derek Jarman and Everything That is the Case.” 1 April 2022. Abstract
• Andrea Gadberry, “To Be Determined: On Literature’s Causes”. 28 April 2022. Abstract
• Joshua Landy, “I’m like a Helicopter: For a Two-Point Theory of Creative Imagery”. 10 May 2022. Abstract