WiSe 21/22: S-Culture-Gender-Media: English Encounters with the 'Orient' (1600-2000)
Sabine Schülting
Kommentar
In his seminal study of Orientalism (1978) Edward Said famously stressed that “The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. In addition, the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience.” The seminar will be concerned with the ways in which literature has contributed to constructing or challenging these Western ideas of the ‘Orient’. Starting with the ‘Turk plays’ of the early modern period, which antedates what Edward Said has called ‘Orientalism’, we will then concentrate on a variety of texts and other media, including (excerpts from) travelogues (e.g. by Lady Mary Montagu and Elizabeth Craven, from the 18th century); drama (Hannah Cowley, A Day in Turkey, 1789); Romantic poetry and 19th-century Orientalist painting; early 20th-century letters by Zeynep Hanim, a Turkish woman who fled from a Turkish harem and lived in Europe; and 20th-century short fiction. Our discussion will focus in particular on the intersections of race, class, religion and gender, including the relevance of gender relations in cultural encounters, Western fantasies about ‘Oriental’ sexualities and gender hierarchies, and representations of gendered spaces such as the harem. Literary texts will be read against the background of the changing discourses on the ‘Orient’ in England and we will analyze these shifting discourses by taking into account how the ‘Orient’, as the object of the gaze, has disturbed and/or contributed to the Western accounts of the East. We will conclude with considering both the persistence and the deconstruction of Orientalism in contemporary literature and popular culture.
Texts: All course readings will be provided via Blackboard. The reading load will be manageable – most texts are fairly short.
Assessment: Students will have to participate regularly, read the assigned texts, take part in the discussions, and contribute a presentation and/or short response papers. The exam (for a regular “Vertiefungsmodul” in English as your major subject/“Kernfach”) is an essay of c. 4000 words. Exchange students are of course welcome. You can gain up to 10 ECTS in this course.
If the pandemic situation allows it, the course will be taught on Campus, in the person. Please check Blackboard in the first week of October for an update.
Schließen16 Termine
Regelmäßige Termine der Lehrveranstaltung