RESEARCH AND TEACHING

[RESUME] [CV] [LIST OF PUBLICATIONS]

Research

My research is situated within the field of intellectual history, with a particular focus on the history of political thought. While my approach is grounded in historical materialism, I also incorporate the contextualization methods of the Cambridge School, global intellectual history, and materialist feminist approaches.

With the exception of an early engagement with classical diplomatic history during my Master’s studies—specifically a study of Hungarian-French relations in the early 20th century—my research has developed along three main trajectories:

1. Critical Marxist Thought and Intellectual History:
   A central focus of my work has been the philosophy and political theory of Georg Lukács and other 20th-century intellectuals who adopted Marxist methodology in a non-reductionist manner. This includes Max Horkheimer (in his early period), Karel Kosík, Henri Lefebvre, the younger Ágnes Heller, and Arnold Hauser. This line of inquiry has significantly influenced my historiographical approach, particularly in exploring the interplay between ideas, artistic forms, and social structures. I have published extensively in Turkish on these figures and am currently pursuing research on Lukács’s political philosophy in the 1960s, with the aim of producing a monograph in English. My current project, funded by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, examines Georg Lukács’s political thought in his later years (1956–1971). The project aims to reconstruct Lukács’s political ideas through primary sources—including his Aesthetics, Ontology, writings on democratization, interviews, and unpublished archival material in German and Hungarian.

2. Global Intellectual History with Emphasis on Class and Gender:
   A second major area of research involves the global reconstruction of intellectual history, incorporating perspectives from class analysis and feminist theory. Over a decade of teaching political thought and collaborating with scholars of feminism and critical theory enabled me to contribute to non-canonical curriculum development and to publish several Turkish-language studies on pre-Marxian socialism and 19th-century liberalism. This culminated in a methodological monograph and a comprehensive, three-volume Social History of Political Thought, which offers comparative analysis of canonical and marginal figures across multiple cultural contexts—including Western Europe, the Islamic world, Byzantium, East and South Asia, and Latin America. The work was well received in Turkey, prompting a revised second edition, with a third currently in preparation. Additionally, I explore Christian Wolff’s political thinking for an eventual research project. My broader research interests within this trajectory include the history of international political thought.

3. Cultural History and the Politics of Opera:
   The third axis of my research pertains to cultural history, particularly the intersection of national identity and opera. My doctoral dissertation, written in French and accessible online, examined this relationship in 19th-century Hungary. Additional publications have addressed topics such as French opera from the Revolutionary period to the Napoleonic era and Wagner’s political philosophy. While this area has received less attention in recent years, I intend to resume research, especially with a focus on the operas of Meyerbeer

 

Teaching

Since 2011, my teaching experience at Istanbul University, Galatasaray University, and Istanbul Aydın University has been invaluable in developing course materials and refining my pedagogical skills for teaching the history of political thought and intellectual history at both undergraduate and graduate levels. I generally avoid using textbooks, instead designing my own course structure and content based on primary sources and secondary literature. My teaching methods emphasize the close study and discussion of primary texts in intellectual history. Additionally, I incorporate literary and artistic sources into my approach—not only well-known works like Sophocles’ Antigone, but also lesser-cited artistic pieces.

 

Undergraduate Courses

• History of Political Thought (From Antiquity to the Early 20th Century)

This set of two second-year courses forms the core of my teaching and served as the foundation for my three-volume book Social History of Political Thought (2021, in Turkish). I have been teaching these courses since 2014, primarily in Turkish and occasionally in English. They provide a global account of the history of political thought.

 

• Previous Courses

Over the years, I have taught various other courses, including Political Ideologies, Islamic Political Thought, History of Socialism, Introduction to Historical Materialism, Indian and Chinese Political Thought in the Twentieth Century, Nations and Nationalism, World History (19th–20th Centuries), Turkey in the 19th and 20th Centuries, and History of Istanbul. Some of these topics are no longer within my research focus, while others, such as Islamic Political Thought, have been integrated into the core courses.

Master’s Level

• International Political Thought

A Master’s course (in English) that I first taught in the 2023-2024 academic year. It is a chronological study of the history of international thought, incorporating recent literature on empire, world order, interstate relations, jus gentium, and modern international law.

 

• Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche

A Master’s course (in Turkish) that has evolved over time—from an examination of the main political texts of Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche to a comparative analysis of their social ontology and political thought through a thematic approach.

 

Doctoral Level

• Critical Theory

A PhD seminar focusing on the early Frankfurt School, from the origins to the 1950s.

 

• Hegel and Dialectical Thought

A PhD seminar structured around lectures following Hegel’s system in the Encyclopedia, with excursions into other texts like the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Philosophy of Right.