What is in A Coffee Cup? Turkey and the European Union

5:00 pm: Reception
6:00 PM: Screening of “Coffee Futures” (2009, 22 minutes), followed by a discussion with:

• Zeynep Gursel
  (Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan- Ann Arbor; Director & Co-producer of “Coffee Futures”)
• Hakan Tekin
  (Consul General of the Republic of Turkey in Los Angeles)
• Cihan Tugal
  (Department of Sociology, University of California- Berkeley)

Panelists will focus on political, historical and cultural issues surrounding Turkey’s accession to the European Union.

Coffee Futures (2009, 22 minutes) weaves together the Turkish custom of coffee fortune-telling with Turkey’s attempt to join the European Union since 1959, revealing the textures of a society whose fate has long been nationally and internationally debated often in relation to Europeanness. It aims to encourage a dialogue born from openness, and explores what kind of a place one wants Europe to be in the future.  Coffee Futures received 2009 Special Jury Award for Originality from EurActiv Fondation. In 2010,  it received Best Documentary Short Award in MiradasDoc Festival, Audience Award in !f Istanbul International Independent Film Festival, and Audience Award in Ann Arbor Film Festival. For more information, please visit http://www.neysehalimfilm.com/

Zeynep Gursel is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan- Ann Arbor, and director & co-producer of “Coffee Futures.” She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California-Berkeley. Her research focuses on how things become imagineable both for individuals and groups, and how forms in which the past and today are narrated are shaped by, and in turn shape, expectations of the future. She was introduced to the documentary world when she worked on Damming the Euphrates(Paxton Winters, 2001) in Southeast Turkey. She is currently completing a book manuscript, Image Brokers,  on the culture of the international photojournalism industry. 
 
Hakan Tekin is Consul General of the Republic of Turkey in Los Angeles. He received his B.A.in International Relations from Ankara University in 1989 and joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey in 1990. He served in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) and Sofia (Bulgaria), attended the NATO Defense College Senior Course in Rome, and worked at the Permanent Mission of Turkey to the United Nations in New York. He assumed his post in Los Angeles as Consul General in April 2007.

Cihan Tugal is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California- Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Michigan- Ann Arbor. His research focuses on the role of religion in political projects and how the interaction between religion and politics shapes everyday life, urban space, class relations, and national identity. His book Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism was published in 2009 by Stanford University Press. His works also appeared in Economy and Society, Theory and Society, Sociological Theory, the New Left Review, the Sociological Quarterly, and edited volumes.

Co-sponsored by the Mediterranean Studies Forum, The Europe Center, The Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Turkish Student Association,  Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies.