Hybrid Lecture by Berke Çetinkaya at Kemal H. Karpat Center for Turkish Studies: Byzantium, Historical Nostalgia, and Digital Extremism

This talk examines one such overlooked arena: the highly politicized and frequently extremist reinterpretations of Byzantium circulating in the digital world, focusing particularly on the platforms 4chan and TikTok. Drawing on a dataset of more than one hundred videos, over ten thousand comments, and hundreds of discussion threads, the talk examines how these online environments have become arenas for the reinterpretation and weaponization of the Byzantine past. Understanding how Byzantium is appropriated in these spaces is therefore essential for grasping the contemporary political uses of the medieval past. 

About the Speaker  

Berke Çetinkaya holds a BA and MA in History from Boğaziçi University and is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research focuses on the social, intellectual, and cultural history of Byzantium; education and historiography in late Ottoman and Republican Turkey; reception studies; and digital history. In addition to his published articles and book chapters, he translated Leonora Neville’s Byzantine Gender into Turkish in 2025. He is currently working on his first monograph, Byzantium in Contemporary Politics and Media: Imagined Pasts and Extremist Frontiers On- and Offline, to be published by Arc Humanities Press, which forms the basis of his talk. 

Location: (CT) at Memorial Union, Beefeaters Room (Third Floor) 

Time: 1:00–2:00 PM (CT) (Turkey: 21.00-22:00) 

Zoom link:  https://uwmadison.zoom.us/j/97405379821?pwd=ywCtWGfRDfGhKfDLVRB1LKYr4K6K9a.1  

For more information: https://www.instagram.com/p/DVq_qlgFg3c/?igsh=MXM5YWI4Njg3djlnZA==