Limits of Westernization

Perin E. Gurel is assistant professor of American studies and concurrent assistant professor of gender studies at the University of Notre Dame. Her work has appeared in American Quarterly, the Journal of Transnational American Studies, Gastronomica, and the Journal of Turkish Literature.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Good West, Bad West, Wild WestOver-Westernization1. Narrating the Mandate: Selective Westernization and Official History2. Allegorizing America: Over-Westernization in the Turkish NovelUnder-Westernization3. Humoring English: Wild Westernization and Anti-American Folklore4. Figuring Sexualities: Inadequate Westernization and Rights ActivismPostscript: Refiguring Culture in U.S.–Middle East RelationsNotesIndex

With sophistication and mastery, Gurel offers an original perspective on how the Turkish elite and public have been refashioning images of America for their own political and social purposes for more than a century. The result is an extraordinarily well-written account of the role of culture in the international relations of both Turkey and the United States, allowing us to better grasp and critique the roots of contemporary Turkish and American narratives about identity and politics. -- Cemil Aydin, author of The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought In The Limits of Westernization, Perin Gurel offers a multifaceted approach to interpreting the complex ways in which the United States has figured in a rapidly changing Turkey, using four key lenses through which to tell this story: political history, literary analysis, a discussion of language and humor, and gender and sexuality studies. Taken as a whole, the book illuminates how during the American century, Turkey and the United States were intertwined in ways much greater and more sophisticated than we knew. -- Brian T. Edwards, author of After the American Century: The Ends of U.S. Culture in the Middle East Gurel's book is a savvy and nuanced account of the multiple meanings of America and the West in Turkish culture and politics. This is groundbreaking scholarship that uses culture-from novels to jokes to signs held up at protests-to explore how issues such as Westernization, the decline of the Ottoman empire, and US-Turkish relations were imagined in Turkey. Gurel goes beyond showing the love-hate relationship that Turks had had with the United States; she examines how cultural flows across borders created "vernacular transculturation"-spaces of interchange and transformation. The book is at once humorous and erudite, a pleasure to read and to learn from. An outstanding piece of scholarship. -- Melani McAlister, author of Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and US. Interests in the Middle East since 1945