Vision

The Department of English and American Literature and Culture at Kadir Has University strives to enable students to reach their full intellectual potential. Studying literature, language, and related humanistic disciplines equips students to understand not only the ideas, attitudes, and values of their own culture but those of others as well. Frequent and intensive practice in reading, discussing and writing about literary expression develops the ability to weigh evidence, to form sound critical judgments, and to articulate one’s conclusions in a logical and persuasive manner.

The Department of American Culture and Literature was established in response to Turkey’s growing need for education that conforms to international standards. Never has educational quality been more important to Turkey than now, given the prospect that the nation will become a partner in the European Union during the active careers of most of today’s students. As the importance of borders and boundaries has diminished in this era of internationalization and the Internet, it has seemed appropriate to bring the related disciplines of literary and cultural studies together. In keeping with this philosophy, the Department offers a wide choice of elective courses offering insight into American and European culture, as well as a strong translation component. The result of this curriculum is to encourage a comparative perspective on the world.

Language training is an essential element of our program. We want all our students to develop their ability to communicate effectively in English. This requires a combination of language knowledge, skills, and confidence. Reading, writing, thinking, and speaking are at the heart of liberal education. A mastery of these skills provides a foundation for success in any career.

Reinforcing the pragmatic value of the academic program, our small classes and low student-teacher ratio offer an environment which fosters those skills in leadership and collaboration that are essential both to self-realization and professional success.

Not for nothing is it said that the most practical of educations is the liberal arts education. We expect our graduates to enjoy productive careers in the public and private sectors of Turkey and countries abroad, in such fields as business, finance, government, international relations, education, the media, technology, and the arts, to name only a few possibilities.

Mission

The Department of American Culture and Literature at Kadir Has University is a liberal arts program devoted to the study of Western culture, with an emphasis upon the culture, literature, and history of the United States.  While literature remains at the center of the program, our curriculum is interdisciplinary and comparative, offering students the opportunity to study the United States, and by extension, the Western tradition, from a wide range of perspectives including popular culture,
gender studies, law, music, and visual culture.

The Department of American Culture and Literature aims to attract international scholars with an intimate knowledge of the cultural life of the United States, who are dedicated to giving students a top-notch undergraduate education by international standards.  Our goal is to maintain a  high ratio of  faculty to students and  to keep  classes as small as possible. For the next  five years we have developed a plan that includes the following goals:

1. Increasing the holdings of the library (books and journals)
2. Retaining  small class sizes (Ideally our class size is around 15 students)
3. Adding   area  electives to our  curriculum to enhance its interdisciplinary nature
4. Recruiting  new international faculty members, including  scholars visiting  for one year who can keep us up to date  with what is going on in American scholarship
5. Obtaining  funding for extra-curricular activities and scholarly events such as the lecture series, academic conferences, seminars, workshops, etc.
6. Obtaining funding for  research  support (travel to archives, libraries, field work) to strengthen our research potential
7. Expanding the use of technology in the classroom

Overview

The curriculum of The Department of American Culture and Literature at Kadir Has University is designed to facilitate encounters between students and the great ideas that have come our way in the last 3000 years or so. Its purpose is to get students to stretch themselves, to grow and to discover their intellectual and creative potential. In this service, the idea of America is a great one. The Republic is a 200-year-old political and social experiment that has either failed or succeeded. In either case it is worth spending intellectual energy on, not least because the USA today is like the rhinoceros in the bathtub: you can’t ignore it. Love it or hate it, it is useful to try to understand it.

And to get the core of it we have to look at its roots, which are deeply entwined in the intellectual and political history of the West since Socrates. Therefore our curriculum makes an attempt to be holistic. We have courses in classical mythology and literature, Byzantium, Western Civilization, philosophy, English literature, literary criticism, and the theory and practice of translation, in addition to courses specifically in American literature and culture. In short, the KHU-ACL curriculum is mainly a liberal arts program whose purpose is to introduce students to a variety of meaningful ideas, and  from there  encourage them to  begin forming their own.

As it happens, most of the great ideas of intellectual history are encoded in books; and for this reason our curriculum is literature-based. The study of literary texts is an intellectual discipline in its own right as well as a method that can be transferred to other fields of study. Thus our students are brought to the close examination of language and ideas as found in primary  sources. Essential to this task is research and writing, or textual scholarship, an activity that involves sifting evidence, performing analyses, reaching conclusions, and formulating arguments based on facts and logic. In this scholarly endeavor, the field of American Studies is simply grist for the mill of the student’s own personal, intellectual, and creative growth rather than an object in itself.

Not to be overly obvious, but it may be worth saying that we are not interested in “information transfer” or in propagating any particular view (establishment or otherwise) regarding so-called American “reality.” Our goal is simply to assist our students to become educated in the classic sense of being “led forth,” of developing themselves.

WORK AREAS

Students from our department have found employment in government service, with the media, as translators, and in the tourism sector; some have continued on to graduate school in literature, cultural studies, and translation studies.