Week 3: The Imperial eye: Orientalism and representations of the Middle East

Mini Lecture

Core Seminar readings:

Edward Said, 'Introduction', Orientalism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1978).

Ali Behdad, ‘The Orientalist Photograph,’ in Camera Orientalis : Reflections on Photography of the Middle East (Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 2016), pp. 17-39.

Ali Behdad, ‘Orientalism and Middle East Travel Writing,’ in Geoffrey Nash (ed.), Orientalism and Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp.185-201.

Fred Halliday, ‘“Orientalism” and Its Critics,’ British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 20, no. 2 (1993): 145-163.

Further Readings:

See this very useful bibliography on Said and his commentators and critics

Bernard Lewis, ‘The Question of Orientalism,’ New York Review of Books (24 June 1982).

[In relation to this previous reference, see also Edward W. Said and Bernard Lewis, ‘Orientalism: An Exchange,’ New York Review of Books (12 August 1982).]

Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 2009).

John MacKenzie, Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts (Manchester University Press, 1995).

Lisa Lowe, Critical Terrains: French and British Orientalisms (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991).

Wael B. Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of Modern Knowledge (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018).

Ali Behdad, ‘Orientalism after “Orientalism”,’ L'Esprit Créateur 34, no. 2, (1994): 3-11.

Zeynep Celik, Europe Knows Nothing About the Orient: A Critical Discourse from the East (Istanbul: Koç University Press, 2021).

Ali Behdad, Belated Travelers: Orientalism in Age of Colonial Dissolution (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994).

Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge, 1992).

Geoffrey P. Nash, From Empire to Orient: Travellers to the Middle East 1830–1926 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005).

Paul and Janet Starkey, Unfolding the Orient: Travellers in Egypt and the Near East (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001).

Kathryn Tidrick, Heart-Beguiling Araby: The English Romance with Arabia (London: Tauris, 1989).

Robin Bidwell, Travellers in Arabia (London: Hamlyn, 1976).

Reina Lewis, Rethinking Orientalism: Women, Travel and the Oriental Harem (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004).

Daniel Martin Varisco, Reading orientalism: Said and the Unsaid (Washington: University of Washington Press, 2017).