Nesir: Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi: Announcements

CfP: CfP: Theoretical Inquiries, Critical Dialogues I–II

Nesir: Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi — 2025-07-02

Nesir: Journal of Literary Studies invites submissions for its 10th issue (April 2026) and 12th issue (April 2027). These issues are open to original articles without thematic restriction, covering classical and contemporary literary theories, literary traditions, genres and discourses, text-based interpretations and analyses, as well as comparative and interdisciplinary studies. This call prioritizes approaches that consider literature as a mode of thought marked by conceptual depth and metaphorical dynamism, rather than as something confined to a single period or national context.

Our journal aims to foster contributions that bring the historical and poetic distinctiveness of Turkish literature into a transformative dialogue with global literary thought; that create rather than merely apply theoretical frameworks; that interweave disciplinary perspectives with interdisciplinary questioning; and that promote interpretive approaches attentive to the historical and structural depth of literary meaning. Accordingly, submitted articles should not be limited to describing a work, a period, or a theoretical concept but should establish a critical engagement, raise new questions, and seek to expand the boundaries of literary understanding.

Believing in the necessity of intertextual critical dialogues for the ongoing development and renewal of literary thought, Nesir will give priority during the evaluation process to contributions that engage with, reference, or critically respond to studies previously published in the journal, either theoretically or interpretively.

For these issues, we welcome research articles and book reviews written in Turkish or English. Submissions should follow Nesir’s writing and citation guidelines and be sent by 15 January 2026 for Issue 10 and 15 January 2027 for Issue 12.

CfP: Call for Book Reviews

Nesir: Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi — 2025-05-15

Nesir: Journal of Literary Studies welcomes critical reviews of recently published academic works in the fields of literary theory, literary history, comparative literature, and Turkish literary studies. In addition to special issues that focus on the historical and theoretical problems of literature, each issue includes analytical book reviews that critically engage with a work’s main arguments, originality, and its place within the relevant scholarly literature.

Below is a list of suggested titles for review. However, this list is by no means exhaustive; reviews of other high-quality works on related subjects are also warmly welcomed:

Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano, Occasions for Poetry: Politics, Literature, and Imagination Among the Early Modern Ottomans, 2025.
William Stroebel, Literature’s Refuge: Rewriting the Mediterranean Borderscape, 2025.
Mehmet Fatih Uslu, Çok Uzak Çok Yakın: Osmanlı’dan Türkiye’ye Modern Ermenice Edebiyat, 2025.
Ceyhun Arslan, The Ottoman Canon and the Construction of Arabic and Turkish Literatures, 2024.
Müstakim Arıcı ve Sami Arslan, eds., Sebeb-i Telif: Osmanlı Literatüründe Açık ve Örtük Yazma Nedenleri, 2024.
Nergis Ertürk, Writing in Red: Literature and Revolution Across Turkey and the Soviet Union, 2024.
Nir Shafir, The Order and Disorder of Communication: Pamphlets and Polemics in the Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Empire, 2024.
Atiye Gülfer Gündoğdu ve Servet Gündoğdu, Gömülü Metinler Neden Döner: Edebi Mülksüzleşme Bağlamında Harabat Mukaddimesi, Tahrib-i Harabat ve Ta’kib, 2023.
Lars Marcus Petrisson, Writing as Re-enchantment: The Arabic and Turkish Novel’s Neo-Sufi Response to Secular Modernity, 2023.
Nil Tekgül, Emotions in the Ottoman Empire: Politics, Society, and Family in the Early Modern Era, 2023.
Şima İmşir, Health, Literature and Women in Twentieth-Century Turkey: Bodies of Exception, 2023.
Zeynep Uysal ve Didem Havlioğlu (eds), Routledge Handbook on Turkish Literature, 2023.
Fredric Jameson, Mimesis, Expression, Construction: Fredric Jameson’s Seminar on Aesthetic Theory, 2024.
Nidesh Lawtoo. Homo Mimeticus: A New Theory of Imitation, 2022.
Servet Gündoğdu. Mimesis, İfade ve Gösterge: Şiirin Özgünlüğü Bağlamında Poetika Sorunu, 2021.

Submission and Review Process

Length: Between 600 and 2000 words. In exceptional cases, the upper limit may be extended to 3000 words with editorial approval.

Style Guide: Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition – Notes and Bibliography system.

Deadlines:
March 1 for the April issue
September 1 for the October issue

Editorial Contact: Reviews will be evaluated by our book review editor, Elif Sezer-Aydınlı. Please send your review proposals and completed texts to:
editor@nesirdergisi.com and elif.sezer@sabanciuniv.edu

We strongly encourage contributors to contact the editor regarding the book they intend to review before submitting their work.

We look forward to your contributions.

CfP: CfP: Mimesis in Philosophy and Literature

Nesir: Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi — 2025-03-27

Issue Editors: Emre Koyuncu (Ankara University) and Servet Gündoğdu (Universität zu Köln)

One of the most enduring concepts in the philosophy of art and literature, mimesis has historically developed around the idea of “imitation,” serving as a key reference point in discussions of how art represents nature, human life, and action. Etymologically, mimesis refers not merely to imitation but also to a dramatic and embodied re-enactment. In Ancient Greece, it emerged as a performative mode of ritual, poetry, theatre, and music. In later classical philosophy, according to traditional interpretations, Plato regarded mimesis as a derivative and misleading copy of ideal forms, while Aristotle reconceptualized it as a creative act linked to learning and catharsis—one that reveals the universal order behind appearances.

Over time, mimesis evolved in tandem with changing aesthetic regimes of representation: from the medieval notion of the worldly reflection of divine truth, to Renaissance ideals of naturalism, and finally to the formal harmony of Neoclassicism. In the late 18th and 19th centuries, Romantic aesthetics displaced mimesis in favor of artistic originality and inner expression. In the twentieth century, structuralist and poststructuralist critiques further destabilized the concept, challenging the reliability of representation itself. Within semiotic frameworks, mimesis came to be seen as complicit in the illusion of referentiality and was subjected to deconstruction. Yet rather than vanishing, mimesis reemerged beyond the aesthetic domain, offering new conceptual possibilities in psychoanalysis, sociology, anthropology, philosophy of language, and hermeneutics.

In this broader context, mimesis has found renewed theoretical vitality. From Lacan’s theory of the mirror stage and the formation of the ego, to Girard’s analysis of mimetic desire and the origins of cultural violence; from Tarde’s theory of social imitation, to Gadamer’s view of art as the enactment of truth through play; from Ricoeur’s threefold model of narrative time, to Auerbach’s philological exploration of literary realism—mimesis is now understood not merely as imitation, but as a foundational mode of thought and representation. Today, it allows us to rethink relations among repetition, difference, subjectivity, desire, alterity, and truth across disciplines and traditions.

Nesir: Journal of Literary Studies invites contributions for its ninth issue, to be published in October 2025, focusing on the concept of mimesis in its various dimensions across philosophy and literature. The journal welcomes research articles, and book reviews written in Turkish or English.

Submissions must follow the journal’s submission and citation guidelines and should be sent by August 1, 2025.

Reality and Representation: Literary and aesthetic transformations from Ancient Greece to postmodernism
Mimesis in Ancient Philosophy: Reinterpreting Plato and Aristotle in contemporary theoretical contexts
Difference, Repetition, and the Copy: Rethinking mimesis through models, exemplars, and representation
Linguistic Mimesis: The mimetic force of language, imitation in discourse and speech
At the Limits of Representation: Aesthetic ruptures, the crisis of representation, and the dissolution of mimesis
Between Mimeses: Adaptation and rewriting across genres, media, and narratives
Imitating the Sacred: Mimesis, icons, ritual, and theological representations of the divine
Cultural Imitation and Social Modeling: Traces of mimesis in anthropology and sociology
The Mimetic Self: Psychoanalytic subject formation and mirror theory in Freud and Lacan
Ethical and Political Representation: Mimesis in art, politics, and the public sphere
Digital Mimesis: Virtual reality, algorithmic creativity, and representation in technological environments

For submissions and further details, please visit our website: https://nesirdergisi.com/