Theatre Arts & Performance Studies

Şeyda Nur Yıldırım is a PhD student in the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at Brown University. Her current research covers the role of theatre and performance in transmitting and transforming social memory, intergenerational trauma, and the politics of denial. Şeyda received her BA in Turkish Language and Literature and English Language and Literature as a double degree student at Boğaziçi University and her MA in Communication Studies at Kadir Has University in Istanbul. From 2020 to 2023, she worked as a graduate researcher in the European Research Council Starting Grant-funded project, “Staging National Abjection: Theatre and Politics in Turkey and Its Diasporas.” Her MA thesis, “Historiographies of Abjection: The Armenian Memory in Contemporary Turkish Public Theatre,” examines the revitalization of Armenian theatrical heritage in contemporary Turkish public theatre productions. Şeyda’s work has appeared in Text and Performance Quarterly and the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism. Her article, “Staging Theatre Historiography: The Afterlives of Ottoman Armenian Drama in Contemporary Turkish Public Theatre,” is forthcoming in Theatre Research International. In tandem with her profound interest in theatre and performance studies, Şeyda’s primary research areas encompass memory studies, psychoanalytical theory, ethnicity and race studies, literary theory, and cultural studies.