Aylin Bademsoy

Aylin Bademsoy

Assistant Professor of German
research interests:
  • Ideology Critique
  • Feminist Theory
  • 19th and 20th Century German Literature
  • Late Ottoman/Turkish Literature
  • Film Theory

contact info:

mailing address:

  • Department of Comparative Literature & Thought

    MSC 1104-146-319

    Washington University

    1 Brookings Drive

    St. Louis, MO 63130-4899

Aylin Bademsoy’s research focuses on 19th and 20th century German and Turkish film and literature.

Professor Bademsoy's first book project engages with the entwinement of processes of modernization and racialization in German and Turkish cultural discourse. Drawing on a critical reading of social theorist and historian Moishe Postone, Modernity, Mobility, Capital examines the transition from pre-modern anti-Judaism to modern antisemitism and the emergence of the latter in the context of recuperative modernization in the periphery.  She has also written about the ideological metamorphoses of capitalist patriarchies and the entanglement of völkisch racism and antisemitism in German colonial literature, and co-edited with Marco Abel and Jaimey Fisher a volume of translated interviews of the Berlin school filmmaker Christian Petzold.

Recent Courses

Topics in Comparative Literature: Women's Literature and Feminist Theory

In this course on women's writing, film, and feminist theory, we will examine a range of texts written by women, view films by women auteurs, and engage with foundational works of feminist theory. Our historical focus will primarily be on 20th-century culture and theory, while our geographic scope will extend from North Africa and Asia Minor to Europe and the U.S. We will juxtapose literature and film from the Metropolitan centers of the Global North with works from the Global South, allowing us to explore both commonalities and divergences that define global women's writing and filmmaking. Key topics include the (bourgeois) family, marriage, and motherhood; patriarchal violence, counterviolence, and the concept of the "femme fatale"; feminist utopias and dystopias; feminist materialisms, unproductive and reproductive labor; and finally, the intersections of gender, race, and class.

Intermediate German: Core Course III

This course is designed to expand and deepen students' understanding of modern German society and culture and to help them improve their skills in all four key areas of foreign-language learning: reading, speaking, listening and writing. All class discussions and assignments will be in German in order to provide students with an opportunity to expand their active and passive vocabulary and gain confidence in their ability to communicate in the language. Prerequisite: German 102D, the equivalent, or placement by examination. Students who complete this course successfully should enroll in German 202D.