Contact Information
607 S Mathews Ave.
M/C 148
Urbana, IL 61801
Biography
My research is an ethnographic exploration of how trans women who do sex work in Istanbul creatively compose spaces of relatedness through mother and daughter relationships to challenge social and material forms of marginalization. I particularly focus on material and affective circulations of memories among trans mothers and daughters that disturb gendered and sexualized understandings of body, kinship, language, and time. By tracing daily interactions and narratives of trans mothers- daughters, I analyze how trans women challenge politics of memory and normative conceptualization of “inter-generational” transmission of memory while unsettling the unquestioned practices of queer kinship.
Research Interests
Queer Memory, Trans/Queer Kinship, Language and Queer Lingua
Grants
2019 – 2020 Wenner - Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant
2019 – 2020 Social Science Research Council (SSRC) International Dissertation Research Fellowship
Additional Campus Affiliations
The Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies - Jewish Culture and Society
Humanities Research Institute - Fellows 2022-23: Un/Doing
External Links
Highlighted Publications
Çalışkan, Dilara. “Queer Bağ, Ailesel Zaman Kavramlarının Tezahürü ve Hatırlattıkları” in Türkiye’de Cinsiyet Kültürleri Dicle Koğacıoğlu Kitabı eds. Ayşecan Terzioğlu and Cenk Özbay, İstanbul, İletişim Yayınları. 2019.
Çalışkan, Dilara. "Queer Postmemory." European Journal of Women's Studies 26.3 (2019): 261-273
Çalışkan, Dilara. “Nobody is going to let you attend your own funeral” After Death of a Trans
Body and Naming the Unnamed”. in Women Mobilizing Memory, eds. Ayşe Gül Altınay, Marianne Hirsch, Alisa Solomon and Banu Karaca. NY: New York City, Columbia University Press. 2019.
Çalışkan, Dilara. “Curious Steps: Mobilizing Memory Through Collective Walking and
Storytelling in Istanbul,” co-authored with Ayşe Gül Altınay, Bürge Abiral, Armanc Yıldız, in Women Mobilizing Memory, eds. Ayşe Gül Altınay, Marianne Hirsch, Alisa Solomon and Banu Karaca. NY: New York City, Columbia University Press. 2019.
Recent Publications
Çalışkan, Dilara. “World-Making: Family, Time, and Memory Among Trans Mothers and Daughters in Istanbul” in Queer Kinship eds. Elizabeth Freeman and Tyler Bradway, Duke University Press. 2022