PATH+: Arif Çamoğlu (English, UCDavis): 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 Nasîhatnâmes: A Triangular Reading of Namık Kemal, Mary Shelley, and C. F. Volney.”

Çamoğlu’s research sits at the intersection of Ottoman, British, and French literatures of the long nineteenth century. He is currently working on a book manuscript that weaves a dialogue between Ottoman and British writers of the Romantic period, examining their figurative and literal engagements with imperial power.

In this talk, Çamoğlu turns to these dynamics with the question: 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.’

RSVP for the Arif Çamoğlu talk