Ahmet Atay co-edits book on intercultural memory
Ahmet Atay, professor of communication studies and chair of Womens, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Global Media and Digital Studies, and Film Studies programs at 91勛圖厙, is the co-editor of a book that adds to the scholarship of intercultural communications through the study of memory. Intercultural Memory: Contesting Places, Spaces, and Stories was publishedin March 2021by Peter Lang and co-edited by Yea-Wen Chen and Alberto Gonz獺lez.
Atay explained thatthe idea of memory as a subfield of intercultural communicationis not widely studiedso the editors wantedto use a critical perspective to examine whyindividuals and culturesremembercertain things. The pieces in the book spotlight different events or lived experiences and articulate the political and personal reasonsbehind remembering, he said.The idea for this book came from a conference where the co-editors presented their workand is related totheAtayslarger research interestswithin intercultural communications. Previously, I worked on a project on how diasporic queer individuals negotiate and communicate with their memories of their homelands and the past through online domains,Ataysaid.
The book includes a range of stories that showthe different ways memory is significant. Some of the pieces shed more light on LGBTQIA+ communities and how they remember events in and through media; how diasporic experiences are remembered through photography; and howethnicizedandracializedexperiences are remembered through visual culture forms,Atayexplained.He included his own piece on the Turkish Cypriot diaspora and the idea of home and memory through photographs.
Atayplans to work on future projects related to memory and digital culture and visualculture,as well asincorporating some of this work into some of his courses at Wooster, including Intercultural Communication and Globalization and Identity.We are excited about this publication because we believe it contributes to intercultural communication scholarship very differently and makes room for studying memory through a cultural lens, he said.
Posted in News on May 13, 2021.
