Aycan Akçamete

Aycan Akçamete is a core faculty member in Comparative Literature and Theatre Arts at the University of Oregon. Her research lies at the intersection of theatre and performance studies, comparative literature, and Middle East studies. Broadly speaking, she investigates how theatrical meaning is co-created through performances, criticism, translation, and other forms of cultural mediation, rethinking the theatre event as a network of artistic, institutional, and public practices. Her scholarship is especially concerned with intercultural theatre, diaspora, censorship, human rights, and the transnational circulation of performance between Southwest Asia and Europe.

Her current book project, Developing Intercultural Networks: Turkish-Kurdish Diaspora, Criticism, and London’s Arcola Theatre, shifts the discourse on intercultural theatre and theatre criticism by treating theatrical reviews as a constitutive part of the theatrical event itself. Drawing on case studies from London's Arcola Theatre, the project demonstrates how artists, critics, audiences, marketing practices, funding bodies, and cultural institutions co-constitute the meanings and public lives of performance. In doing so, the book offers a networked model for understanding how theatre circulates, acquires significance, and shapes public discourse across cultural and political contexts.

Professor Akçamete's scholarship has appeared in journals, including Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, with additional work forthcoming in an edited volume on censorship, gender, and resilience in Turkish theatre. She completed the first Turkish translation of Hans-Thies Lehmann's Postdramatic Theatre, extending one of the foundational texts of contemporary performance theory to Turkish-speaking readers. Her research has also been presented at meetings of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), the Association for Theater in Higher Education (ATHE), the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), and other national and international conferences.

Committed to collaborative scholarship and public humanities, Professor Akçamete serves as co-editor for performance reviews at Arab Stages and is a core member of the MENA Theater Makers Alliance Educators Circle. She previously served as a core member of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Focus Group at ATHE and currently co-convenes the Theatre Criticism Working Group at ASTR. Her recent public writing and collaborative projects advocate for more inclusive approaches to theatre history, pedagogy, and criticism while fostering transnational conversations among scholars, artists, and educators.

Before joining the University of Oregon, Professor Akçamete earned her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Texas at Austin, where she received the Maxine Hairston Prize for Excellence in Teaching and numerous fellowships supporting her research. Prior to her doctoral studies, she taught at Istanbul Technical University and worked extensively as a theatre reviewer and journalist in Türkiye. These experiences continue to inform her understanding of criticism as both an intellectual practice and a vital component of theatrical culture.

At the University of Oregon, Professor Akçamete teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in world drama, theatre and performance theory, and theatre history. Her courses introduce students to theatre and performance traditions from across cultures while encouraging them to think comparatively about theatre, literature, and performance. Combining critical inquiry with embodied learning, her classes incorporate performance-based exercises that invite students to engage with theatrical concepts through practice, as well as analysis. 

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