{"id":4864,"date":"2025-06-02T11:13:27","date_gmt":"2025-06-02T11:13:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amer.bilkent.edu.tr\/?p=4864"},"modified":"2025-12-02T11:28:51","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T11:28:51","slug":"inaugural-senior-project-colloquium-a-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/amer.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php\/2025\/06\/02\/inaugural-senior-project-colloquium-a-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Inaugural Senior Project Colloquium a Success"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Friday, 30 May, American Culture and Literature held its first-ever senior project colloquium, with presentations by a number of graduating seniors to a room full of professors, friends, and peers.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4867 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/amer.bilkent.edu.tr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Senior-Project-Colloquium-2025-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"567\" height=\"422\" \/>For this inaugural event, four students chose to present their work and field questions from the audience. Dilara Ba\u015far conducted a critical analysis of representations of the Middle East in American cinema, using Edward Said\u2019s conception of \u201corientalism\u201d as a critical frame. Rather than writing an academic essay, Dilara chose to create a compelling \u201cvideo essay\u201d that made great use of the films of her study and interviews with Said. Her voiceover struck the perfect balance of academic essay and creative work. Zeynep Sude \u00d6zdo\u011fan presented her original short story, \u201cThe Story of Once Silenced,\u201d a utopia that offers, in her words, \u201ca critical analysis of the function of history and how crafted knowledge of the past would change the future of a society.\u201d The story challenges us to ask questions about social constructions of gender and race as well as collective memory and trauma.<\/p>\n<p>Zeynep \u00c7al\u0131\u015f\u0131r produced a hardcover book exploring American horror legends and their histories, each story accompanied by striking original artwork. Clearly inspired by Professor Johnson\u2019s American Gothic class, the illustrations are both beautiful and frightening. Finally, Arda Atmaca shared a song he wrote, inspired by contemporary American country music and his time in the American Culture and Literature program. In the style of a countrified American rock ballad, Arda\u2019s song interrogates a number of American myths, particularly the concept of American exceptionalism.<\/p>\n<p>The presentations prompted lively discussions and felt like a fitting celebration of all our students\u2019 hard work, not only for their senior projects but for their years in the AMER program. This may have been the first event of its kind, but it will not be the last.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Friday, 30 May, American Culture and Literature held its first-ever senior project colloquium, with presentations by a number of graduating seniors to a room full of professors, friends, and peers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4873,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/amer.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4864"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/amer.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/amer.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amer.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amer.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4864"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/amer.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4869,"href":"http:\/\/amer.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4864\/revisions\/4869"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amer.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/amer.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amer.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amer.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}