The Eighth Annual Boston University

“Big Fat Books” Symposium

On Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red

took place on April 10th, 2026, 9:30am-5:30pm

The Howard Thurman Center

808 Commonwealth Ave, Boston MA

 

Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red is a richly layered exploration of artistic, epistemology, and cultural encounter in the late Ottoman world. Through its polyphonic structure and mediation on visual representation, the novel interrogates the relationship between aesthetic tradition, individuality, and power.

Continuing WLL’s Big Fat Books tradition, we are delighted to welcome Professor Erdağ Göknar as keynote speaker. The symposium will explore themes of art, cultural tension, the novel’s reception in East Asia and its place in World Literature.

Sponsored by the Boston University Center for the Humanities and the Department of World Languages & Literatures

Symposium Schedule:

9:30-9:45 Breakfast

9:45-10:00 Welcome Remarks

  • Roberta Micallef & Abigail Gillman

10:10-11:00 Panel I: The Historian’s Craft

Chair & Discussant: Maria Zabaneh

  • Aimee Genell – “Pamuk’s Istanbul”
  • Diana Wylie – “My Name is [the color] Black”
  • Meryem Demir – “His Father is in the Nobel. His Mother is in the Novel. Where is Pamuk?”

11:05-12:05 Panel II: My Name is Red Travels East

Chair & Discussant: Catherine Yeh

  • Zhuming Yao – “Seeing and Being Seen: Pamuk’s Chinese Paintings”
  • Yoon Sun Yang – “When The Dead Speak: Pamuk and Han Kang”
  • Sarah Frederick – “Narrating the Depiction of Hell in Japan: A Comparison of My Name is Red and Akutagawa · Ryunosuke’s Hell Screen (1918)”

12:05-1:00 Lunch

1:00-2:15 Panel III: My Name is Red and World Literature

Chair & Discussant: William Waters

  • Peter Schwartz – “I Am a Gold Coin: An Erogenous Semiotics of the Counterfeit”
  • Keith Vincent – “All Beautiful Babies Look Alike”
  • Yuri Corrigan – “Gogol’s Icons, Pamuk’s Miniatures”
  • Vasiliki M. Limberis – “Art as divine distortion or divine reflection in ‘My Name is Red’”

2:15-2:30 Coffee Break

2:30-4:30

Keynote Lecture: “Emphasis as Cultural Translation and Method in Pamuk’s My Name is Red“

Erdağ Göknar

4:45-5:30 Student Panel

 

Registration:

If would like to register, please click here. We look forward to seeing you there!