Congist'26: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Crisis

Session

Session 1.2 (Day 3)

D3-S1-A7

15 May 2026, 10:00

A7 (Istanbul University Faculty of Letters)

Conveners

Session 1.2 (Day 3): Edebiyat Bilimi / Literary Studies

• Arpine Mızıkyan (Istanbul University)

The Music of Crisis: Identity and the Reimagining of Self in Deborah Levy’s August Blue (D3-S1-A7)

Zeynep Bilge (Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University)

15/05/2026, 10:00

Oral Presentation

Deborah Levy’s August Blue (2023) displays the condition of crisis as both a thematic concern and a structuring principle of narrative. The novel follows Elsa M. Anderson, a prodigious pianist whose aborted performance of Rachmaninov becomes the catalyst for a series of dislocations: the collapse of artistic mastery, the fracturing of selfhood, and the unraveling of secure belonging. Rather...

From Polarity to Polyphony: The Antigone Tragedy in Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire (D3-S1-A7)

Annelise Hein (Haliç University)

15/05/2026, 10:20

Oral Presentation

Focusing on narrative polyphony, this paper analyzes how Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire (2017) rewrites the Antigone tragedy to move beyond the binary logic that often frames contemporary debates on migration and identity in contemporary London. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts of polyphony and dialogism, I demonstrate how Shamsie’s multivoiced novel overturns agonistic interpretations of...