About
Deniz Göktürk is a Professor in the Department of German at the University of California, Berkeley, with extensive cross-disciplinary affiliations including the Department of Film and Media, Berkeley Center for New Media, Digital Humanities, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Center for Race and Gender, Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, and Program in Critical Theory. She previously taught at the University of Southampton (1995-2001) and has served as graduate adviser and department chair at Berkeley since joining in 2001.
Her educational background includes a Dr.phil. from Freie Universität Berlin (1995), focusing on literary and cinematic imaginations of America in early twentieth-century German culture. She also worked as a certified Turkish translator for legal and medical institutions prior to her academic career.
Göktürk's research centers on cultural and media studies with emphasis on moving images, multilingual literature, and migration theories within global frameworks. Her work critically examines social interaction and aesthetic intervention across transnational contexts, bridging film studies, migration theory, and cultural geography through interdisciplinary methodologies that challenge conventional national narratives.
Her publications from 1991-2020 reveal consistent engagement with German-Turkish cultural dynamics, cinematic traditions, and urban identities. Key patterns include transnational perspectives on migration, deconstruction of national cinemas, and analysis of aesthetic forms in social transformation—particularly evident in her edited volumes on German cinema, Istanbul's cultural positioning, and integration narratives.
Major recognitions include:
- DAAD fellowship
- ESRC grant (UK)
- Institute for European Studies support
- Townsend Center for the Humanities funding
- Center for Cinepoetics fellowship (Berlin)
- Digital Humanities at Berkeley initiative
As graduate adviser and department chair, she has shaped German studies curricula while leading cross-campus collaborations like 'Cultural Forms in Transit' and the 'Circulation' working group. Her grant portfolio reflects sustained institutional support for transnational humanities research spanning migration studies, media theory, and cultural geography.
She co-founded TRANSIT (Berkeley German Department's electronic journal, 2005) and coordinates the Multicultural Germany Project, establishing platforms for critical discourse on migration, media, and cultural identity through digital humanities frameworks and international scholarly networks.
