Fulbright award for MA student Çağlar Köseoğlu
Çağlar Köseoğlu, MA student Literary Studies, has received the Fulbright Graduate Student Grant intended for students who want to study for a master’s degree or a PhD in the United States. He will do a one-year MA called Aesthetics and Politics at the California Institute of the Arts.
Çağlar Köseoğlu, MA student Literary Studies, has received the Fulbright Graduate Student Grant intended for students who want to study for a master’s degree or a PhD in the United States. He will do a one-year MA called Aesthetics and Politics at the California Institute of the Arts.
MA Aesthetics and Politics
‘After a first round of elimination based on the submitted applications I was invited for an interview at the Fulbright Center in Amsterdam,’ says Köseoğlu. ‘A couple of days after this interview I was informed that I passed the second round too and that I would be awarded the scholarship.’
Köseoğlu will be studying at CalArts (California Institute of the Arts) in Los Angeles County. He will do a one-year master called Aesthetics and Politics, focusing specifically on the interaction between these two fields. ‘This will enable me to approach my main interest, contemporary political poetry, from a much wider and yet more fundamental perspective.’ The program Köseoğlu will follow also encourages new ways of critical writing and does not insist on a categorical distinction between critical and creative writing. ‘Hopefully this results in a discursive space in which critical inquiries can lead to poetic explorations and vice versa.’
Studying in the States
Köseoğlu has been wanting to study in the States for quite some years now. After obtaining his bachelor degree in philosophy from the University of Amsterdam, he worked as a junior analyst for a think tank in Istanbul and Berlin, writing on Turkish civil-military relations. ‘This was an inspiring and invaluable time for me, though I still felt the urge to study further.’ In 2012 he applied to a university in New York but due to a lack of financial means he couldn’t accept their offer. ‘I am very happy that this time I will actually be able to pull it off financially. The Fulbright grant is generous but it doesn’t cover all of my costs. Luckily I was also awarded a grant from CalArts as well as a teaching assistantship with a stipend.’
