Jeannette Okur

Okur coordinates the Turkish Studies program in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches courses on language, literature, film, and cultural studies. Committed to advancing intercultural communicative competence among language learners, Dr. Okur is the author of the open, media-rich Turkish textbook Her Şey Bir Merhaba ile Başlar! (COERLL, 2021) and is currently developing a second open educational resource (OER) titled Sinema Tutkusu: Turkish Language and Culture through Film. Her literary research focuses on the dynamics between perpetrators and victims of political violence, exploring themes such as identity, trauma, and displacement in the novels of Kurdish writers in exile. Her book chapter, “Art and Justice in Bakhtiyar Ali’s Shari Mosiqare Spiyekan” [“The City of Musicians in White”], was recently published in Narrating Transitional Justice: History, Memory, Poetics, and Politics (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025). She looks forward to introducing readers of English to Firat Cewerî’s literary works through her translation I Am Going to Kill Somebody in Fall 2026 (Henar Press).