EUME
2012/ 2013

Kader Konuk

Secularists, Agnostics, Atheists: Redefining Modernity

Kader Konuk is an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and German Studies at the University of Michigan. She received her PhD in Comparative Literature from Paderborn University in 1999. Trained as a comparatist in German, Turkish, and English literature, she focuses on the disciplinary nexus between literary criticism, cultural studies, and cultural history. Her research is situated at the intersections between Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities, beginning with the Ottoman Westernization reforms of the early eighteenth century and continuing on to Turkish-German relations in the twenty-first century. In examining the context for East-West relations (ambassadorial missions, military adventures, travel, migration, and exile), her work analyzes cultural practices like integration, assimilation, and ethno-masquerade. In her monograph East West Mimesis: Auerbach in Turkey (Stanford UP 2010), Konuk investigates the relationship between German-Jewish intellectual exile and the modernization of the humanities in Turkey. She was a fellow of the Working Group Modernity and Islam in Berlin in 2004/2005.

Secularists, Agnostics, Atheists: Redefining Modernity

In her current book project, entitled “Secular Modernity”, Konuk questions the common equation of secularism with Western modernity.