Hollywood/Holivut: Transnational American Cinema in the Making of Turkish Modernity.docx

<p dir="ltr"><i>“Hollywood/Holivut: Transnational American Cinema in the Making of Turkish Modernity”</i> examines the influence of Hollywood cinema on shaping transnational discourses of modernity and national identity through its circulation and reception in Turkey during the early to mid-twentieth century. Treating Hollywood as a vast global media system, including films, stars, magazines, consumer goods, fashion, and institutional structures, this dissertation examines how U.S. cultural diplomacy, shifting geopolitics, and Turkish modernization efforts converged in the mediation of cinematic modernity. It adopts a transnational approach, showing how Hollywood projected a U.S. vision of modernity, infused with racial and gendered meanings, while also exploring how Hollywood was received, reinterpreted, and adapted in Turkey. It maintains that Hollywood served not only as a tool of American soft power but also as a space for contested visions of modernity and Turkish national identity. Using “Holivut,” the Turkish vernacular rendering of Hollywood, as a critical metaphor, it illuminates how Turkish elites and spectators engaged with Hollywood’s gendered and racialized portrayals of American identity as they navigated Turkey's complex position within a global order, at the crossroads of East and West, tradition and modernity, and whiteness and non-whiteness. Rather than viewing Hollywood as a one-directional tool of U.S. imperialism, the study reveals a dynamic process of cultural negotiation, appropriation, and resistance that positioned American cinema as both a template and a contested space for imagining Turkishness. By situating Hollywood’s presence in Turkey within broader frameworks of transnational cultural flows, soft power, and media imperialism, the project explores the co-constitutive and asymmetrical nature of modern nation-building through global cinematic exchange.</p>