Laurent Mignon

Position:

Professor of Turkish Literature; Fellow in Turkish, Middle East Centre, St Antony’s College

Faculty / College Address:

Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies / St Antony's College

Email:

laurent.mignon@ames.ox.ac.uk

Biographic information

Laurent Mignon is Professor of Turkish Literature at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of St Antony’s College and Affiliate Professor at the Luxembourg School of Religion & Society. His research focuses on the minor literatures of Ottoman and Republican Turkey, in particular Jewish literatures, as well as the literary engagement with non-Abrahamic religions during the era straddling the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic

From 2002 to 2011 he taught at the Department of Turkish Literature at Bilkent University in Ankara. He was a Senior Research Fellow at the Lichtenberg Kolleg, University of Göttingen from January to July 2016.  In March and April 2019, he was invited as Visiting Professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. He is an Associate Member of the Centre de Recherche Europes-Eurasie at INALCO, Paris. 

Courses Taught:

  • Introduction to Ottoman
  • Turkish-English Translation
  • 19th and 20th Century Texts in Ottoman Script
  • Modern Literary Texts
  • Political and Cultural Texts
  • Literary Texts 1300-1900
  • Turkish Literature: General Topics
  • Language Reform Texts
  • Turkish Literature: Texts and Contexts
  • Critics, Cronies and Chroniclers:  Literary Criticism in Turkey
  • Jewish-Turkish Literature

NEW PUBLICATIONS:

Books

Uncoupling Language and Religion: An Exploration into the Margins of Turkish Literature (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2021).
 
Alberto Ambrosio and Laurent Mignon (ed.), Penser l'islam en Europe: Perspectives du Luxembourg et d'ailleurs  (Paris: Hermann, 2021).
 
Articles and Book Chapters
 

“Back to the future? The Place of the Religious ‘Other’ in Ismail Gasprinsky’s Islamic Utopia”, Religion (2024): 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2024.2362064

 

“Avram Davidson, Alberto Moravia and the Quest for Peace”, Tenri Journal of Religion 52 (2024): 39-57. 

 

“Religion and Literature in Ottoman and Republican Turkey, 1850–1960”, in The Oxford Handbook of Religion in Turkey, edited by Caroline Tee, Fabio Vicini, and Philip C. Dorroll, (online edition, Oxford Academic, 23 Jan. 2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197624883.013.17

 

“From Silvio Pellico to Selahattin Demirtaş: Prison Literature and Literary Polemics in Turkey”, Comparative Literature Studies 61.1 (2024): 33–48. https://doi.org/10.5325/complitstudies.61.1.0033

 

“Memleketten Bahseden Edebiyattan Edebiyattan Bahseden Memlekete: Türkçe Edebiyat Çalışmalarına Dair Notlar”, Toplum ve Bilim 164 (2023), 97-115. 
 

“When Shalom Became Happiness: Moses Mendelssohn’s Translation of the Psalms”, in Katja Triplett (ed.), Translated Religion: In a Forest of True Words, translated by Chris Abbey with contributions by Thandi Allen (Leipzig: Universität Leipzig, 2023): 25-33. https://ul.qucosa.de/api/qucosa%3A84546/attachment/ATT-0/

 
"The Challenges of Alterity: Notes on Samuel Hirsch’s Contemporaneity", in Samuel Hirsch: Philosopher of Religion, Advocate of Emancipation and Radical Reformer, edited by Judith Frishman and Thorsten Fuchshuber (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2022): 125-144. 
 
"Andere Götter, andere Opfer: Debatten über Vegetarismus und Religion in der Türkei, am Beispiel der Werke von Hasan Ferit Cansever und Asaf Halet Çelebi", in Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 30/1 (2022), 60-83. https://doi.org/10.1515/zfr-2021-0038
 
"Unveiling Desire: Love in Modern Turkish Poetry", in Love and Poetry in the Middle East: Love and Literature from Antiquity to the Present, edited by Atef Alshaer (London: I.B. Tauris, 2022): 151–168.
 
Publications since 2014

Books

  • Hüzünlü Özgürlük: Yahudi Edebiyatı ve Düşüncesi Üzerine Yazılar, Istanbul: Gözlem Yayınları, 2014.
  • Edebiyatın Sınırlarında: Türkçe Edebiyat, Gürcistan ve Cengiz Aytmatov’a Dair, Istanbul: Evrensel Basım, 2016.
  • Co-written with Katja Triplett: Et le papillon chanta: Orhan Veli, les "Haïkaï de Kikakou" et la genèse du haïku turc, Paris: Editions Petra, 2019.

Edited Volumes

  • Co-edited with Cristina Alleman Ghionda and Gülbeyaz Kula: Diversität in europäischen Bildungssystemen und in der Lehrer_innenbildung, Peter Lang, 2017.
  • Co-edited with Ahmed al-Shahi: Women Writers of the Two Sudans: Proceedings of the Conference Organised by the Sudanese Programme at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, Oxford: The Holywell Press, 2019.

Articles and Book Chapters

  • “A Pilgrim’s Progress: Armenian and Kurdish Literatures in Turkish and the Rewriting of Literary History”, Patterns of Prejudice 48/2 (May 2014), 182- 200.
  • “French in Ottoman Turkey: ‘The Language of the Afflicted Peoples’?” in European Francophonie: The Social, Political and Cultural History of an International Prestige Language, edited by V. Rjéoutski, G. Argent and D. Offord (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2014): 405-434.
  • “Turkey” in Tagore: One Hundred Years of Global Reception, edited by M. Kämpchen and I. Bangha (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2014): 162-174.
  • “Judeo-Turkish” in Handbook of Jewish Languages, edited by L. Kahn and A.D. Rubin (Leiden: Brill, 2015): 634-640.
  • With Katja Triplett, “From Kikaku to Orhan Veli: The Genesis of the Turkish Haiku”, Kansai University Japan-EU Research Center Report 6/6 (2016), 43-50.
  • “Se préoccuper de Judas” in Bilge Karasu : L’étranger de l’intérieur (Inverses Hors Série N˚4), edited by Alain Mascarou (Paris : Société des amis d’Axiéros, 2016) : 67-76.
  • “Von verlorenen Buchstaben und verborgenen Welten: Minderheitenliteraturen in der Türkei und in Großbritannien lehren” in Diversität in europäischen Bildungssystemen und in der Lehrer_innenbildung, edited by C. Alleman Ghionda, G. Kula and L. Mignon (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2017): 169-184.
  • “Du mysticisme au nationalisme religieux : les ambiguïtés de Sâmiha Ayverdi (1905-1993)”, European Journal of Turkish Studies [Online], 25 | 2017, 
    https://journals.openedition.org/ejts/5454
  • “Ringen mit Dämonen: Gibt es eine jüdisch-türkische Literatur?“ in Ni kaza en Turkiya: Erzählungen jüdischer Autoren aus Istanbul, edited by Wolfgang Riemann (Engelschoff: Auf dem Ruffel, 2018): 125-144.
  • "Notes sur l’histoire de la littérature turque des Tanzimat (1839) à la 'révolution des lettres' (1928)”, Slovo 50 (2019), 169-190.
  • "Les frontières et l'Orient: Quelques remarques sur l'oeuvre de Hugh MacDiarmid", Europe: Revue littéraire mensuelle 1092 (April 2020), 250-263.
  • “A Few Remarks About Teaching Jewish Turkish Literature” in Disseminating Jewish Literatures: Knowledge, Research, Curricula, edited by Susanne Zepp et al. (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2020): 37-44. 
  • “Les apôtres turcs de Pan et Apollon”, in Générations de la rupture dans les Balkans et en Turquie au XXe siècle, edited by Marie Vrinat-Nikolov, Slavica occitania 52 (2021), 77-92.
  • “Le défi de l’altérité religieuse : Samuel Hirsch, le judaïsme et l’islam”, in  Penser l'islam en Europe: Perspectives du Luxembourg et d'ailleurs, edited by Alberto Ambrosio and Laurent Mignon (Paris : Hermann, 2021): 247-267.
  • "Walking Through a Library: Notes On The Ladino Novel and Some Other Books”, in Sephardic Trajectories: Archives, Objects, and the Ottoman Jewish Past in the United States, edited by Kerem Tinaz and Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano (Istanbul, Koç University Press, 2021): 103-122.
Photograph of Laurent Mignon