Critical Forum Introduction: Cultural Encounters and Textual Speculations in the Mediterranean

Abstract

Our Critical Forum explores speculative visions of the Mediterranean as a site of cultural encounter, social conflict, and environmental crisis. Building on shifts in utopian studies and Mediterranean studies, we highlight narratives from Türkiye, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia that challenge Eurocentric frameworks. By engaging with speculative fiction and dystopian imaginaries, this forum examines how literary and cultural texts reframe the Mediterranean as a space of hybridity, contestation, and future possibilities.

Merve Tabur

Lecturer/Researcher

I work at the intersection of comparative literature and environmental humanities, asking how speculative fiction, film, and visual arts from Southwest Asia and North Africa and their diasporas imagine futures otherwise.