Kenan Behzat Sharpe is a freelance journalist and academic based between Santa Cruz, California, and Istanbul, Turkey. He has a PhD in literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research centers on the relationship between social movements and literature, music, film and popular culture in Turkey, the Eastern Mediterranean and the United States. He is an editor and founder of Blind Field: A Journal of Cultural Inquiry. On Twitter: @kenan_sharpe