Asst. Prof. Dr. Henrieta Krupa Publishes Five New Interdisciplinary Studies in Film, Literature, and Cultural Theory

Faculty News: Interdisciplinary Scholarship and Research Output

The Department of English Language and Literature at Girne American University is pleased to announce a series of recent scholarly publications by Dr. Henrieta Krupa, reflecting her dynamic interdisciplinary research across film studies, literary studies, visual culture, and philosophy.

One of Dr. Krupa’s recent publications, “The Trickster as Facilitator and Designer of Play: Exploring Subversion and Transformation through Play and Playfulness” has been published in Revista de Etnografie si Folclor – Journal of Ethnography and Folkore, a prestigious journal indexed in Web of Science (AHCI), Scopus, and Current Contents – Arts & Humanities (CC). Building upon William J. Hynes’s six-point typology of trickster characteristics, the study proposes an additional feature, conceptualizing the trickster as a “facilitator and designer of play.” The article highlights the transformative potential of play and playfulness as mechanisms that challenge established structures and open spaces for creative and cultural transformation.

In addition, Dr. Krupa’s article “The Dialogics between Mythos and Logos in Metin Erksan’s Sevmek Zamanı,” has been published in SineFilozofi, a peer-reviewed journal indexed in TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM TR Dizin, The Philosopher’s Index, ERIH PLUS, and EBSCO. The article analyzes Sevmek Zamanı by through the lenses of Sufi mysticism, Platonic philosophy, and Lacanian psychoanalysis, arguing that the film operates dialogically between mythos and logos, creating a liminal cinematic space where emotional and rational modes of meaning coexist, thereby challenging schematic interpretations of narrative cinema.

Another film studies article, “Beyond the Male Gaze: Women Directors Reclaiming the Female Body in Cinema,” has been published in Academic Art, a peer-reviewed journal indexed in ASOS, Index Copernicus, and EBSCO. Drawing on feminist film theory, the article examines works by Jane Campion, Céline Sciamma, and Chloé Zhao, demonstrating how contemporary women directors challenge the legacy of the male gaze and construct alternative cinematic languages that foreground female subjectivity, relationality, and embodied experience.

Expanding her work in literary studies, Dr. Krupa’s article “Undoing Life Writing: Postmodern Biographic Metafiction in Woolf, Barnes, and Winterson” was published in the Uludağ University Faculty of Arts and Sciences Journal of Social Sciences, a peer-reviewed journal indexed in TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM. The study examines Orlando, Flaubert’s Parrot, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?. Drawing on Linda Hutcheon’s concept of historiographic metafiction as well as feminist and queer approaches to life writing, the article argues that these works challenge the authority and ethics of traditional biography by foregrounding narrative construction, epistemological uncertainty, and genre fluidity.

Dr. Krupa has also published “American Feminist Artists: Re-signifying the Female Body in Visual Arts” in the Journal of American Studies of Turkey, a journal indexed in MLA International Bibliography among others. The article examines the tradition of the female nude in visual art and its function within a patriarchal signifying system that perpetuates gendered values. It further explores how American feminist artists challenge and subvert these representations in order to reclaim and re-signify the female body through alternative visual strategies.

These publications highlight Dr. Krupa’s ongoing commitment to interdisciplinary research in film studies, integrating philosophy, psychoanalysis, art history studies, and feminist theory, and contribute to Girne American University’s growing international research profile. The Department congratulates Dr. Krupa on these scholarly achievements.