Biography
Burcu Baykan received her doctorate in Digital Arts and Humanities Ph.D. Program from Trinity College Dublin, School of Creative Arts, and her M.A in Media and Visual Studies Program from Bilkent University. She was a graduate fellow at Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute between 2014-2016. Her research primarily focuses on various “posthuman” and “more-than-human” approaches to the body and subjectivity, as well as their implications for technology, ecology, gender, socio-politics, and what it means to be human in the 21st century. Specifically, she is interested in the entangled relationships between humans and nonhumans (AI, technology, machines, environment, animals) in visual arts and media, including film, video art, performance art, installation, eco-media, and bio-art. She tackles these issues through the cultural, critical, and philosophical lenses of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Henri Bergson, Donna Haraway, Katherine Hayles, Bernard Stiegler, Rosi Braidotti, Brian Massumi, Jane Bennett, among others. Her other interests include media theory, graphic design research, and practice.
Dr. Baykan teaches graduate and undergraduate level courses in media studies, critical theory, and contemporary art, design & media practices. She has presented her research at international conferences and had her work published in anthologies by Edinburgh University Press, Leuven University Press, Palgrave Macmillan, Brill, Rowman & Littlefield, and in CINEJ: Cinema Journal.
Research Interests: Critical Theory and Media Theory, Continental Philosophy and Aesthetics, Critical Posthumanism and New Materialism, Deleuze & Guattari Studies and Contemporary Art/Cinema, The Body & Identity in Film and Visual Arts, Performance Art Research, Posthumanities – Technohumanities – Environmental Humanities – Human-Animal Studies in Visual Media, Eco/Cultural Studies of Science-Technology-Embodiment, Graphic Design Practice and Research.
Courses Taught
- FA 171 // Introduction to Art, Design and Culture
- COMD 203 // Media Studies I
- COMD 204 // Media Studies 2
- COMD 442 // Special Topics in Visual Studies
- COMD 512 // Foundations in Visual Studies
- COMD 514 // Identity Space and Image
- GRA 207 // Conceptual Design
Selected Publications & Works
- Baykan, B. (2021). Ghastly Assemblages and Glittery Bodies without Organs in the Sculptures of David Altmejd. In P. de Assis and P. Giudici (Eds.), Machinic Assemblages of Desire: Deleuze and Artistic Research 3 (pp. 197-208). Leuven: Leuven University Press.
- Baykan, B. (2021). Speculative Ecologies of Plastics in the Environmental Aesthetics of Pınar Yoldaş. In S. Oppermann and S. Akıllı (Eds.), Turkish Ecocriticism: From Neolithic to Contemporary Timescapes (pp. 245-266). Lanham: Lexington Books (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers).
- Baykan, B. (2020). Body without Organs as Pure Potentiality in Patricia Piccinini’s Sculptural Installations. In. S.E. Wilmer and R. Przedpełski (Eds.), Deleuze, Guattari and the Art of Multiplicity (pp. 154-168). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
- Keskin, S., Baykan, B. (2020). Becoming-Animal in the Narrative and the Form of Reha Erdem’s Kosmos. CINEJ: Cinema Journal. Vol. 8.1: pp. 181-216.
- Köksal, E., Baykan, B. (2020). The Materiality of Reality: The Floating Consciousness in Altered Carbon. In A. Kobus and Ł. Muniowski (Eds.), Sex, Death and Resurrection in Altered Carbon: Essays on the Netflix Series (pp. 51-66). Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co.
- Baykan, B. (2018). Respatialising the Body: The Ontologically In-Between Subject in Orlan’s Body of Work. In N. Prowse (Ed.), Intervening Spaces: Respatialisation and the Body (pp. 37-59). Leiden, Boston: Brill / Rodopi.
- Baykan, B. (2016). To Be-Between, To Pass Between: Becoming Intermezzo in Orlan’s Carnal Art. In L. Malland and R.F. Narvaez (Eds.), Time, Space and the Human Body: An Interdisciplinary Look (pp. 1-10). Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers.
- Baykan, B. (2015). Into the Body of Another: Strange Couplings and Unnatural Alliances of Harlequin Coat. In M. Causey, E. Meehan, N. O’Dwyer (Eds.), The Performing Subject in the Space of Technology: Through the Virtual, Towards the Real (pp. 17-33). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Baykan, B. (2015). Women’s Reading and Writing Practices: Chick-Lit As a Site of Struggle in Popular Culture and Literature. International E-Journal of Advances in Social Sciences, 1(1), 27-33.
