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Orientalism & Occidentalism

NMC475H1

Undergraduate

The Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations (History)
St. George

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.