Gulsin Ciftci, M.A.
Gulsin Ciftci is a scholar of contemporary American literature. Her current project, Reading Reading: Affect and American Literature in the Twenty-first Century, is concerned with the relationship between reading, affects, and forms. In her readings and academic research, she is most interested in the reasons that draw the reader/viewer towards and away from specific cultural and literary texts, as well as motivations behind our literary and artistic engagements and their relational formations. In addition, she is interested in the body—affective, entangled, phenomenal, and vulnerable—and how literary critique, aesthetics, and philosophy treat the body in various literary and cultural texts, ranging from fiction to TV series and the arts. She currently teaches American Studies at the University of Münster, Germany.
Gulsin studied and taught at various universities, including Harvard University, Yale University, Wesleyan University, and the University of Göttingen, from which she holds an M.A. degree. In her M.A. thesis, The Unbearable Lightness of #instapoetry: Reading and Writing Poetry in the Twenty-First Century Social Media Environment, she brought together media theory, sociological theories of culture, and theories of the public sphere to analyze #instapoetry as both a self-marketing strategy and a poetic form.
Gulsin is a founding board member of the European Association for American Studies Poetry Network and a member of the Network on Academic Forms. She serves as the doctoral student representative at the Graduate School Practices of Literature (GSPoL) and is the founder and convener of the Poetry Parlor. She also serves as co-editor-in-chief of Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies (COPAS) and as associate editor for the New American Studies Journal (NASJ).