This course probes the contemporaneous formation of modern Oriental Studies in Europe and the emergence of discourses on Europe (Ifranj/Farang) in the Middle East from the eighteenth century to the present. Special emphasis will be devoted to encounters between scholars in Western Europe, Iran, India, and the Ottoman Empire. This seminar-style course explains that Orientals gazed and returned the gaze, and in the process of cultural looking, they, like their Occidental counterparts, exoticized and eroticized the Farangi-Other. In the interplay of looks between Orientals and Occidentals, there was no steady position of spectatorship, no objective observer, and no aperspectival position. Intended for upper year students.
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