Selin Berktas is a fourth-year undergraduate student in the English Literature department at the University of British Columbia. Selin’s academic interests include the Post-Soviet sphere, what defines it, what is beyond the “Post-Soviet,” and how literature and other forms of media are intertwined with these blurry definitions. Selin is committed to learning about how cultural work informs our understandings of lived experience, identity, and internationalism.
What was the main focus of your research project during your time as a fellow in the Centre?
My intention with the fellowship was to take the time to build a potential syllabus for a future student seminar; thus, the few months I spent in residency with the Centre, I worked on reading various texts from the Caucasus and Central Asia region, analysing depictions of time and space shaped literary output within the former empire.
My research was aimed at encouraging a more ethical comparative approach for the region’s cultural works, rather than perpetually being considered in parallel to the empire’s own work, looking into geopoetics, the memory of geographies.
Part of my time was spent ‘decolonizing’ Russian literature to begin with, in an attempt to understand how a postcolonial framework would apply to this sphere. From there, I worked on getting through an extensive reading list, trying to understand narratives and how the function they serve.
What drew you to this research project?
Oof. Well, there is a very expansive set of scholarships coming about for this Eurasia/Post-Soviet region, one that is far more comprehensive than what scholars in Russian Studies may offer. It seemed as though this was not the case at UBC just yet.
Initially it was this lack that drew me, but as the fellowship went forth, I grew to be far more curious with the immense abundance of literature that startles the ready narratives that may surround the region. I ultimately distanced the project from being a ‘breaking narratives’ one to one that wasn’t focused on the narratives in Russian literature, but the self-mapped ones in literature from the Caucasus and Central Asia itself.
What are your plans after your tenure at CES?
I’ve applied to run a student-led seminar based on the research from this fellowship and perhaps will pursue graduate studies in a similar field.
What would you consider to be a strength of the Centre for European Studies, and how did it help support you/your project?
You’re allowed to shape your research in whichever way you’d like to. I didn’t think a set of slides would be helpful for the end-of-term presentation and that was totally fine. The Centre was very helpful and I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to ground myself in something so remarkable if not for them.
