13–15 May 2026
Istanbul University Faculty of Letters
Europe/Istanbul timezone

Reading a Crisis of Immunization in Miyase Sertbarut’s Çöp Plaza

D3-S1-A6
15 May 2026, 10:40
20m
A6 (Istanbul University Faculty of Letters)

A6

Istanbul University Faculty of Letters

Oral Presentation Session 1.1 (Day 3)

Speaker

Suzan Deniz (Tekirdağ Namık Kemal University)

Description

The recent pandemic of our time, Covid-19, has highlighted not only a crisis in global medical sciences but also an immunization crisis among individuals. Today treated similarly to common cold, Covid-19 had devastating effects globally in terms of medicine, economics, societal dynamics, and workings of states. The term immunity, as perceived by the Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito, suggests that the biological process of immunization working as a protective process against the alien agents resembles the sociopolitical actions taken against alien bodies entering a society. His parallelism between this biological process and the sociopolitical action sparks an opportunity to see it in literary texts as well. Since literature seldom turns a blind eye to the events of crisis in society and every other area that reflects a human-related crisis, it is only natural to see such issues in works of fiction. In a similar vein, children’s and young adult fiction also include exemplary texts that deal with crisis fiction, the focus of this study being on Miyase Sertbarut’s duology Çöp Plaza, which showcases crisis on two levels one being an immunization crisis against a mysterious pandemic, the second being the price of immunization for the nonimmune. In this study, it is my aim to approach the crisis of immunization from Esposito’s view by touching upon how this crisis is reflected in Sertbarut’s works.

Keywords immunity, crisis of immunity, pandemic, Çöp Plaza
E-mail suzie.deniz@gmail.com

Author

Suzan Deniz (Tekirdağ Namık Kemal University)

Presentation materials

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