Imagining the East: The History & Politics of Middle East Studies

What is 'the West'? Where did this notion come from? How did the West then imagine and study 'the East'? Edward Said coined the term "Orientalism" to describe Western fear and fascination with the societies of the Middle East and Asia, or the "Orient." For centuries, travelers, traders, scholars, and diplomats regarded the Orient as a place of mysticism, backwardness, licentiousness, and repression. As they did so, they constructed an idea of 'the West' as its opposite: secular, rational, liberal etc. The power to represent Middle Eastern and Asian societies for audiences back home translated into the power to colonize. In this class, we explore the history and politics of Western depictions of the Orient particularly of the Middle East and Islam. We examine the ways that the production of knowledge about these societies enabled European colonialism. We also consider to what extent the study of the Middle East in the US today is any different and, if so, how?
Course Attributes: AS HUM; AS LCD; AS SC; EN H; BU Hum; BU Eth; BU IS

Imagining the East: The History & Politics of Middle East Studies

JEWISH, ISLAMIC AND MIDDLE EAST STUDIES 382

Section 01