Background
Gülden Olgun is a PhD candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature. She is currently working on her thesis titled Identity and Homelessness in Contemporary Turkish-Kurdish-German Cinema: “Heimatfilms without Heimat”, which deals with issues of home, homeland, longing, displacement, and homelessness.
Her research focuses particularly on Kurdish Cinema produced in Germany. She investigates how the idea of Kurdish identity and of homeland as a symbol and as a territorial space are constructed in both diaspora as well as in Kurdish cinema. She also seeks answers to the following questions: How have the Kurds experienced their identity and homeland through the themes of longing, displacement, fragmentation, and loss for both the individual and for their collective history? What are the similarities and differences in the perception of homeland, leaving home, and identity in Kurdish and Turkish-German cinema?
Her PhD research draws upon theories in film studies, national and transnational cinema theories, minor literature and minor cinema frameworks.
Research Interests
- Transnational Cinema and Literature
- particularly German-Turkish Cinema and Literature
- Cinemas of displacement and exile
- Kurdish Cinema in Germany
Teaching Interests
- German
- Television Culture
