Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 72-03, Section: A, page: .

Advisers: Matthew Jacobson; Laura Wexler.

"Wild Westernization: Gender, Sexuality, and the United States in Turkey" explores three different kinds of sociopolitical and cultural phenomena broadly labeled "batililasma" [westernization] in Turkey. The dissertation begins with an interdisciplinary literature review to identify, differentiate, and label these phenomena as "strategic westernization," "wrong-westernization," and "wild westernization." Each chapter then traces the intersections of these westernizations, their effects on gender and sexual politics in Turkey, and their influence on the country's relations with the West, specifically the United States.

The first type of westernization, "strategic westernization," is a state and elite strategy to "modernize" via selective incorporation of Western institutions, products, and formal innovations. Nineteenth-century centralization reforms known as the Tanzimat, the elite-led adoption of the novel into Ottoman Turkey, and much of Kemalist governmentality fall under this category. Strategic westernization has tended to be conservative in its sexual politics and has generally had a salutary effect on U.S.-Turkish relations. The second, "wrong-westernization," is a discourse of corruption, with gendered and sexualized overtones, seeking to draw the borders of appropriate westernization. The discourse of "wrong-westernization" can be found in popular as well as official texts and is used to delegitimize certain sociocultural movements and developments as not fitting within the nationalist parameters of acceptable change. As such, it is deeply conservative in its sexual and gender politics and tends to draw a negative picture of U.S.-Turkish relations as degenerative. Finally, westernization as the process and results of uneven and unequal cultural exchange with Western societies and resulting sociocultural transformations can be labeled "wild westernization." As a form of transculturation, wild westernization tends to be expansive in its gendered and sexualized effects and has volatile and unpredictable influences on U.S.-Turkish relations.

This dissertation employs a multilingual archive ranging from the folkloric to the official in order to critically trace these three westernizations, the intersections and tensions between them, their influence on Turkey's relations with the West, and their effects on gender norms and sexualities within the country, from the mid-nineteenth through the early twenty-first centuries. Exploring the clash of westernizations in history and historiography (Chapter 1), language and folklore (Chapter 2), literature (Chapter 3), sexual identities and relations (Chapter 4), and dance performances (Chapter 5), this study underlines the importance of understanding local discourses on "westernization" for a transnational, feminist American Studies.