A. Karabiyik (Aybüke) MA

I am a Swiss scholar with Turkish origins working on contemporary Indigenous literatures from Turtle Island. I hold a bachelor’s degree in English and Social Work and Policy, as well as a master’s degree in English, both from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. In my Master’s thesis, I analyzed Driftpile Cree Nation author Billy-Ray Belcourt’s depiction of the Indigiqueer body in his poetry and life writing.

In my PhD project, tentatively titled "Indigenous Ecologies of Technology: Towards a Critical Appreciation of Contemporary “Technological” Apocalyptic Indigenous Literatures," I investigate how the imbrications between technology, its contexts, its agents, and its uses inform the conceptualization of apocalypse in contemporary Indigenous literatures. I am interested in how authors and their characters challenge the settler colonial exclusion of Indigeneity from technological frameworks, and in how technology functions as a key mechanism through which authors and characters articulate visions of survivance, sovereignties, and decolonial futurities. In addition, I am also interested in how technology intersects with core Indigenous values, such as the relationships with the more-than-human, including land, water, and non-human animals, which are crucial aspects for understanding how Indigenous literatures transcend the settler binary of nature vs. technology. To explore these aspects of apocalyptic Indigenous writing, I will define how the relational and place-based Indigenous knowledges inform the incorporation and use of technologies in describing and imagining pre-apocalyptic, apocalyptic, and post-apocalyptic worlds. My work is anchored in the observation that contemporary Indigenous authors and scholars intentionally equate settler colonialism with apocalypse. I am therefore interested in the theoretical and political visions of the present and future they put forward in contemporary literary works.