PATH+: Arif Çamoğlu: Gothic Nasihatnames: A Triangular Reading of Namık Kemal, Mary Shelley, and C. F. Volney

Join us for the first PATH+ event of the academic year! We are delighted to welcome Arif Çamoğlu, Assistant Professor of English at UC Davis, for a talk titled “Gothic Nasihatnames: A Triangular Reading of Namık Kemal, Mary Shelley, and C. F. Volney.”

What do Namık Kemal's “Rüya,” Mary Shelley's “The Last Man, and C. F. Volney's “Ruins” have in common? All three issue warnings about the end of empire through a shared dystopian didacticism. Returning to the genre of the nasihatnâme — narratives of advice on rulership — this talk unpacks the political implications of the guidance these texts offer on imperial demise. Each work distresses its readers with scenarios of imperial catastrophe, only to instruct them toward a new imaginary of sovereignty: one no longer centered on a monarch or sultan but vernacularized in the hands of the “people.”