Dr. Patrick C. Lewis

Biography

I received a BA in Comparative Literature from Cornell University in 2009; a MA in Cultural Studies from Sabanci University; and a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 2020. Prior to joining the faculty at Concordia, I taught at the Universities of Chicago (2020-2022) and Mississippi (2022-2023), and was a Postdoctoral Fulbright Fellow in Turkey (2023-2024). My research has been supported by the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships Program (FLAS), Fulbright-Hays DDRA Fellowship, and NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship.

My scholarly work focuses on the politics of language in Turkey and North Kurdistan and the role of state policy, language activism, and mass media in shaping how people use and evaluate language. My current research project explores the connections between higher education, language policy, and transnational youth migration in Turkey and North America. More broadly, I am interested in language and the semiotics of value, and my work examines the various ways that language is positioned as a medium and object of value in social life.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

• The Spirit of the Book Cafe: Kurdish-language Activism and the Contested Values of Youth and Culture in Turkey, Turkish Studies (2024)
• (co-authored with José Rafael Medeiros Coelho) Mesopotamia and the Garden of Civilizations: Public Life and the Politics of Solidarity and Difference along Turkey’s Syrian Border, Conflict and Society (2024)
• Signs of Solidarity and Difference: Kaçak Tea, Samimiyet, and the National Public in Turkey, Signs and Society (2023)
• On the Sociolinguistic Origins of the term Qazaq: A Proposal for an Alternative Etymology of ‘Cossack’/‘Kazakh’ and an Argument for the Analytical Usefulness of Register in Historical Linguistics, Acta Orientalia (2023)

Policy Papers

• (co-authored with Demet Lüküslü) International Students in Turkey: Migration and Mobility as Competing Frameworks of Analysis, IPC-Mercator Analysis (May 2024)