Turkey and Germany – Beginning

I’m currently getting ready to leave for my study abroad in Istanbul and Berlin. I’ll be spending two weeks in each country with two Northeastern professors and 30 Northeastern students, and do my own research project while I’m there! The subject of my dialogue is Gender, Politics of Space, and Diaspora. As those who know me are well aware, Gender Studies is my passion so I’m really excited to be studying that topic while traveling to exciting new places. I think that studying gender from a global perspective will make me a better feminist because it will give me the opportunity to study issues of gender and sexuality from a new perspective, which is really what we all need to be doing in my opinion.

I’m really excited for my independent research project because I basically have free reign to do anything that interests me. I’m planning on researching the connections between lesbianism and feminism and the stereotype that “feminism turns women into lesbians.” While that is obviously not true, there are a lot of intersections between feminist and lesbian community and it will be very interesting to study that dynamic.

In terms of social life, I am very lucky because I already know about eight people who are going on my dialogue which is pretty unusual. I like everyone I know who is going a lot and I’m excited to get to know more people who are interested in the same subjects as me.

To help explain some of my excitement, I’ll leave you with an excerpt about Kreuzberg, the Turkish neighborhood in Berlin I will be visiting, from Professor Berna Turam’s book:

“What makes Kreuzberg remarkable is that the deep fault lines that divide the immigrant community are compressed into a small, overpopulated area. Located in the heart of Kreuzberg, Kotti is home to the congregations of both Islamist Millî Görüs and Alawite Cemevi mosques, as well as to LGBT clubs and associations. Clearly, none of these are friends or allies, but they cohabit on the same dense and crowded streets without any safety problems. On an ordinary day in Kotti, drug users and punks may mingle at one end of the street while Turkish-descent mothers push their children’s strollers at the other, and feminists can be seen organizing outside all-male Turkish coffee shops. “