MF: You are very engaged in representation analysis, gender studies, and women-on-the-move for decades by now. How did you come to think the way you do about the issues that you’re passionate about?
OE: At the core of all lies my curiosity about the nature and dynamics of injustice when I think about it. It is followed by an early awareness of agency that as individuals we can change things. However, building patience and understanding the importance of transnational and sustainable collaborations came later. Wisdom always comes later, no? That’s the irony of life and the reason why I remained child-free!
How is this passion reflected in other areas of your life?
OE: If you mean non-academic areas by ‘other areas’, I should begin with a correction. I don’t believe in the separation of these, and my life so far has been an evidence. Even as a child, I thought life in my small world was too boring and only by reading and traveling could I transcend it. When I began solo-traveling abroad at 19 and faced many questions that showed extreme prejudices about my country of origin, my interest in studying travel literature and stereotypes began developing. As a literature student, exploring the genre of women’s travel writing was exciting. Later on, I realized the difficulty of categorizing or submitting to already-made compartmentalization of women-on-move. Especially after interviewing refugee women across many countries for years, defining home or belonging as much as traveling became harder to define for me. Recently, I welcomed the phrase “women-on-the-move” into my language so now the trajectory of my life as an immigrant, academic, and traveler gathered under the same roof (only metaphorically speaking of course, hah ha…)
What makes you similar to and different from the audiences with whom you are sharing?
OE: I can’t really know my audiences, can I? I have an imaginary audience which I assume are mostly educated and interested in world affairs, who deeply value traveling and meeting new people and cultures, who are feminist or at least pro-feminist with a good command of English language. These are the similarities that came to my mind immediately. Because I produce work in English mostly, which is not my mother tongue, a major difference between myself and the imagined audience might be in our origins, family and education background as well as my extensive experience of travelling globally and living in different countries more than just a few weeks.
What do you do beyond your scholarship?
I love cooking vegetarian food Turkish, international, and improvised! I love taking walks, reading and writing stories. I don’t have a particular hobby or sports that I am obsessed with due to my personality and view of life. I enjoy being, just being, observing, and thinking. One might also say stories/histories are things that I can never get enough of. Recently, I have been thinking a lot about how to contribute to nature and be more in tune with it. I like spending time by the sea, in botanical gardens, bookstores, and libraries but the last one is true only for North America. I like dreaming and I sometimes write them if they feel very impactful. Call me a nerd but I also like reading the academic or creative works by the people I know, love and respect, including bright students’ work.
What have you read, watched, heard lately that challenges and/or inspires you?
I am reading a book by Volkan Yalazay (2019) Ancient Trees of Istanbul which in fact has many tree-related stories from other cities of Turkey with amazing photos. I keep returning to Ancient Trees - Portraits of Time (2014) by San Francisco-based photographer Beth Moon. I received this signed copy thanks to a gallery owner in Santa Fe. I have had a fascination with old trees since I can remember, which is a kind of mysterious thing that I can’t go into detail here. I enjoy all kinds of narratives that take place in nature no matter what genre actually. I saw a movie which received the best screenplay Oscar this year called A Promising Young Woman, which is promoted as a feminist thriller but it is much more than that. I really enjoyed the way it was done. My next reading is going to be Gabriel Marcel’s Homo Viator Introduction to the Metaphysic of Hope.
What questions do you wrestle with that keep you up at night?
Oh, well… Because I wrestle with questions that keep me alert while I am awake all the time such as injustice and violence against all living beings and arts, I don’t wrestle much at night. Joking aside, I try to get a good night’s sleep whenever I can since it is a major way to struggle with the problems that I deal with as an engaged scholar. Restful sleep is healing.
What are your dreams for the young people in your life?
That they live in a more just, more physically connected and grounded world, that is not threatened by environmental crises one after another. I also hope that they can travel the world and feed themselves with the least possible carbon footprints. I am dreaming of a world where things are practiced by moderation, and there is room for off-screen and family time.
Where is home for you, geographically and metaphysically?
I cannot possibly give you a short answer to this question without feeling it being very reductive and incomplete, I am sorry about that. I feel at home in international, multilingual, and intellectual settings near the water (preferably ocean or the Mediterranean) where people constantly learn from each other without meaning to, where there is genuine respect and love towards each other. There is a saying attributed to Sufism but can be found in many other schools of spirituality: “Being in this world, but not of this world” and I leave it there.
How do those influences show up in your work?
I guess in terms of moderation, and not feeling or acting in a materialistic and possessive manner, be it a partner or anything tangible that seems to be under my realm to an outsider. I know that all beings are temporarily entrusted to us and we are tested through them. I am not ambitious or obsessed with my work even when my limited vision tells me that it is the ‘right’ way to go or to act in a certain manner. I am aware of my situatedness thanks to the theory courses I took in college back in the mid-1990s . However, the kind of consciousness I am actually trying to express goes back to something deeper and more spiritual than reading Foucault or Harding.
Thank you so much Ozlem Ezer for your time.
This interview was conducted by Maria Fedele for her final paper for the course ANTH-158 Feminist Ethnographies, UC Santa Cruz.
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