Nalan Erbil

Dr. Nalan Erbil’s research focuses on nineteenth-century Ottoman and modern Turkish literature, migration, and Turkish language pedagogy. Her current project theorizes an Ottoman and Turkish literary critical-ethical method implicit in the concept and practices of edeb(iyat) in contemporary narratives of migration in Turkish. As a teacher-scholar, her classroom pedagogy is informed by interdisciplinary Humanities which helps bridge approaches to “language” and “content” courses.

Before joining NELC, Nalan worked as Assistant Teaching Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she also served as the Pedagogy Director of The Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Language Institute and the federally funded Turkish Flagship Language Initiative from 2020 to 2024.

Growing up in the rural southwestern Turkey, she identifies as a first-generation college graduate and academic.