USC.edu

Veli N. Yashin

Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature
Email veli.yashin@dornsife.usc.edu Office THH 172 Office Phone (213) 740-0102

Research & Practice Areas

19th and 20th century Arabic and Turkish literatures and cultures; late-Ottoman cultural and intellectual history; the post-Ottoman world; area studies and literary scholarship; conceptions of authority and sovereignty; legacies of German romanticism; histories and future(s) of philology; Mediterranean studies.

Biography

Veli N. Yashin is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. He holds a PhD in Arabic and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, and he is the winner of the 2013 Horst Frenz Prize of the American Comparative Literature Association. Most recently, he was awarded an Edward W. Said fellowship by the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University.

Yashin’s research and teaching focuses on modern Arabic and Turkish literatures and more broadly engages the theoretical and methodological implications of the complex entanglement between cultural and political representation. His work has appeared, and is forthcoming, in the Yearbook of Comparative Literature, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, the Journal of Arabic Literature, Middle Eastern Literatures, Postcolonial Studies, and boundary 2. He is currently putting finishing touches on his first book entitled Disorienting Figures: The Sovereign and the Author in the Ottoman Nineteenth Century.

Yashin’s research and teaching interests include the post-Ottoman world; the relationship between area studies and literary scholarship; conceptions of authority and sovereignty; legacies of German romanticism; histories and future(s) of philology; and Mediterranean studies.

Education

  • Ph.D. Middle East Studies and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, 2015
  • B.A. Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, Columbia University, 2007

  • Research Specialties

    19th and 20th century Arabic and Turkish literatures and cultures; late-Ottoman cultural and intellectual history; the post-Ottoman world; area studies and literary scholarship; conceptions of authority and sovereignty; legacies of German romanticism; histories and future(s) of philology; Mediterranean studies.

  • Book Review

    • Yashin, V. N. (2010). Review of Muhsin al-Musawi, Islam on the Street: Religion in Modern Arabic Literature. Journal of Arabic Literature. Vol. 41 (1-2). pp. 198-200.

    Journal Article

    • Yashin, V. N. (2017). ” ‘The True Face of the Work’: Sovereignty and Literary Form in Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar’s Literary Historiography”. Middle Eastern Literatures. Vol. 20 (2), pp. 162-76.
    • Yashin, V. N. (2014). “Beginning with the Mediterranean”. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Vol. 34 (2), pp. 364-67.
    • Yashin, V. N. (2013). “Euro(tro)pology: Philology, World Literature, and the Legacy of Erich Auerbach”. Yearbook of Comparative Literature. Vol. 57, pp. 269-90.
    • Edward W. Said Fellow, Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University, 2019-2020
    • Conference Grant, University of California Humanities Research Institute, 2017-2018
    • Conference Grant, University of California, Riverside, Center for Ideas and Society, 2017-2018
    • Information Literacy Course Enhancement Grant, Center for Excellence in Teaching, Spring 2016
    • The Horst Frenz Prize of the American Comparative Literature Association, 2012-2013
    • Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) Fellowship, 2011-2012
    • Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship in Arabic, 2010-2011

  • Office Hours

      MTWTh : by appointment only, @ THH 172

  • Administrative Appointments

    • Director of Undergraduate Studies in Comparative Literature, 2015 – 2017

  • Editorships and Editorial Boards

    • Editor, Special section on Mediterranean Studies, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Vol. 34 (2), 2014-2015

    Professional Offices

    • Special Interest Delegate to MLA Delegate Assembly (Ethnic Studies), Modern Language Association, 2015 – 2018

    Professional Memberships

    • Euro-Mediterranean Academy of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Education, 2017 –
    • The Mediterranean Seminar, 2013 –
    • Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, 2009 –
    • American Comparative Literature Association, 2008 –
    • Middle East Studies Association, 2008 –
    • Modern Language Association, 2008 –
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