Erdag Göknar is Associate Professor of Turkish in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University and former director of the Duke Middle East Studies Center. He is a scholar of literary and cultural studies and an award-winning translator whose research and publications focus on intersections of literature and politics in Turkey and the Middle East; specifically, on late Ottoman legacies in contemporary Turkish fiction, historiography, and popular culture.

He is the recipient of two NEA literature fellowships (translation), two Fulbright awards, and residential fellowships at the National Humanities Center and the Stanford Humanities Center.