Modern Orientalism is not a brainchild of nineteenth-century European imperialists and colonialists, but, as Urs App demonstrates, was born in the eighteenth century after a very long gestation period defined less by economic or political motives than by religious ideology. Based on sources from a dozen languages, many unavailable in English, The Birth of Orientalism presents a completely new picture of this protracted genesis, its underlying dynamics, and the Western discovery of Asian religions from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. App documents the immense influence of Japan and China and describes how the Near Eastern cradle of civilization moved toward mother India. Moreover, he shows that some of India's purportedly oldest texts were products of eighteenth-century European authors. Though Western engagement with non-Abrahamic Asian religions reaches back to antiquity and can without exaggeration be called the largest-scale religiocultural encounter in history, it has so far received surprisingly little attention—which is why some of its major features and their role in the birth of modern Orientalism are described here for the first time. The study of Asian documents had a profound impact on Europe's intellectual makeup. Suddenly the Bible had much older competitors from China and India, Sanskrit threatened to replace Hebrew as the world's oldest language, and Judeo-Christianity appeared as a local phenomenon on a dramatically expanded, worldwide canvas of religions and mythologies. Orientalists were called upon as arbiters in a clash that involved neither gold and spices nor colonialism and imperialism but, rather, such fundamental questions as where we come from and who we are: questions of identity that demanded new answers as biblical authority dramatically waned.

A groundbreaking critique of the West's historical, cultural, and political perceptions of the East that is—three decades after its first publication—one of the most important books written about our divided world. "Intellectual history on a high order ... and very exciting." —The New York Times In this wide-ranging, intellectually vigorous study, Said traces the origins of "orientalism" to the centuries-long period during which Europe dominated the Middle and Near East and, from its position of power, defined "the orient" simply as "other than" the occident. This entrenched view continues to dominate western ideas and, because it does not allow the East to represent itself, prevents true understanding.

Orientalism is a central factor within the fashion system, both subtle and overt. In this groundbreaking book, the author shows the extent of the influence that the Orient had, and continues to have, on fashion. Our concept of Western fashion is unthinkable without it, whether in terms of the growth of the cotton industry or of garments we take for granted, such as the dressing gown. From pre-modern to contemporary times, this book demonstrates that, in the realms of fashion, the Orient is not simply a construction or a fascination of the imperial West with its eastern other. Rather, it reveals the extent of cross-pollination, exchange and multiple translation that has taken place between East and West for the last 500 years. Exploring topics including Chinoiserie, masquerade, bohemianism, Japonisme, the "de-Orientalization" of the Orient, perfume and the birth of couture, Fashion and Orientalism is an essential read for students and scholars of fashion, cultural studies and history.

Francis I's ties with the Ottoman Empire marked the birth of court-sponsored Orientalism in France. Under Louis XIV, French society was transformed by cross-cultural contacts with the Ottomans, India, Persia, China, Siam and the Americas. The consumption of silk, cotton cloth, spices, coffee, tea, china, gems, flowers and other luxury goods transformed daily life and gave rise to a new discourse about the 'Orient' which in turn shaped ideas about economy and politics, specifically absolutism and the monarchy. An original account of the ancient regime, this book highlights France's use of the exotic and analyzes French discourse about Islam and the 'Orient'.

Orientalism is about much more than just information gathered about the East within its general postcolonial period. In this period, orientalism is a Western discourse that dominated and shaped the view of the East. There is “otherization” in the way the West has historically looked at the East and within the information presented about it. These original stories of travelers in the past and previous telling about the East are facing a reconstruction through modern types of media. Cinema, television, news, newspaper, magazine, internet, social media, photography, literature, and more are transforming the way the East is presented and viewed. Under the headings of post-orientalism, neo-orientalism, or self-orientalism, these new orientalist forms of work in combination with both new and traditional media are redefining orientalism in the media and beyond. The Handbook of Research on Contemporary Approaches to Orientalism in Media and Beyond shows how both new media and traditional media deal with orientalism today through the presentation of gender, race, religion, and culture that make up orientalist theory. The chapters focus on how orientalism is presented in the media, cinema, TV, photography, and more. This book is ideal for communications theorists, media analysts, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students working in fields that include mass media, communications, film studies, ethnic studies, history, sociology, and cultural studies.

This volume examines how the history of the humanities might be written through the prism of scholarly personae, understood as time- and place-specific models of being a scholar. Focusing on the field of study known as Orientalism in the decades around 1900, this volume examines how Semitists, Sinologists, and Japanologists, among others, conceived of their scholarly tasks, what sort of demands these job descriptions made on the scholar in terms of habits, virtues, and skills, and how models of being an orientalist changed over time under influence of new research methods, cross-cultural encounters, and political transformations. Contributors are: Tim Barrett, Christiaan Engberts, Holger Gzella, Hans Martin Krämer, Arie L. Molendijk, Herman Paul, Pascale Rabault-Feuerhahn and Henning Trüper.

The late Edward Said remains one of the most influential critics and public intellectuals of our time, with lasting contributions to many disciplines. Much of his reputation derives from the phenomenal multidisciplinary influence of his 1978 book Orientalism. Said's seminal polemic analyzes novels, travelogues, and academic texts to argue that a dominant discourse of West over East has warped virtually all past European and American representation of the Near East. But despite the book's wide acclaim, no systematic critical survey of the rhetoric in Said's representation of Orientalism and the resulting impact on intellectual culture has appeared until today. Drawing on the extensive discussion of Said's work in more than 600 bibliographic entries, Daniel Martin Varisco has written an ambitious intellectual history of the debates that Said's work has sparked in several disciplines, highlighting in particular its reception among Arab and European scholars. While pointing out Said's tendency to essentialize and privilege certain texts at the expense of those that do not comfortably it his theoretical framework, Varisco analyzes the extensive commentary the book has engendered in Oriental studies, literary and cultural studies, feminist scholarship, history, political science, and anthropology. He employs "critical satire" to parody the exaggerated and pedantic aspects of post-colonial discourse, including Said's profound underappreciation of the role of irony and reform in many of the texts he cites. The end result is a companion volume to Orientalism and the vast research it inspired. Rather than contribute to dueling essentialisms, Varisco provides a path to move beyond the binary of East versus West and the polemics of blame. Reading Orientalism is the most comprehensive survey of Said's writing and thinking to date. It will be of strong interest to scholars of Middle East studies, anthropology, history, cultural studies, post-colonial studies, and literary studies.

Orientalism and Literature discusses a key critical concept in literary studies and how it assists our reading of literature. It reviews the concept's evolution: how it has been explored, imagined and narrated in literature. Part I considers Orientalism's origins and its geographical and multidisciplinary scope, then considers the major genres and trends Orientalism inspired in the literary-critical field such as the eighteenth-century Oriental tale, reading the Bible, and Victorian Oriental fiction. Part II recaptures specific aspects of Edward Said's Orientalism: the multidisciplinary contexts and scholarly discussions it has inspired (such as colonial discourse, race, resistance, feminism and travel writing). Part III deliberates upon recent and possible future applications of Orientalism, probing its currency and effectiveness in the twenty-first century, the role it has played and continues to play in the operation of power, and how in new forms, neo-Orientalism and Islamophobia, it feeds into various genres, from migrant writing to journalism.

"Whereas some other scholars read selected films mainly to illustrate political arguments, Roan never loses sight of the particularities of film as a distinctive cultural form and practice. Her drive to see 'cinema as a mechanism of American orientalism' results in not just a textual analysis of these films, but also a history of their material production and distribution." ---Josephine Lee, University of Minnesota "Envisioning Asia offers an exciting new contribution to our understandings of the historical developments of American Orientalism. Jeannette Roan deftly situates changing cinematic technologies within the context of U.S. imperial agendas in this richly nuanced analysis of 'shooting on location' in Asia in early 20th century American cinema." ---Wendy Kozol, Oberlin College "Through her vivid illustration of the role of American cinema in the material, visual, and ideological production of Asia, Jeanette Roan takes the reader on a journey to Asia through a very different route from the virtual travel taken by the viewers of the films she discusses." ---Mari Yoshihara, University of Hawai'i at Manoa The birth of cinema coincides with the beginnings of U.S. expansion overseas, and the classic Hollywood era coincides with the rise of the United States as a global superpower. In Envisioning Asia, Jeanette Roan argues that throughout this period, the cinema's function as a form of virtual travel, coupled with its purported "authenticity," served to advance America's shifting interests in Asia. Its ability to fulfill this imperial role depended, however, not only on the cinematic representations themselves but on the marketing of the films' production histories---and, in particular, their use of Asian locations. Roan demonstrates this point in relation to a wide range of productions, offering an engaging and useful survey of a largely neglected body of film. Not only that, by focusing on the material practices involved in shooting films on location---that is, the actual travels, negotiations, and labor of making a film---she moves beyond formal analysis to produce a richly detailed history of American interests, attitudes, and cultural practices during the first half of the twentieth century. Jeanette Roan is Adjunct Professor of Visual Studies at California College of the Arts and author of "Exotic Explorations: Travels to Asia and the Pacific in Early Cinema" in Re/collecting Early Asian America: Essays in Cultural History (2002). Cover art: Publicity still, Tokyo File 212 (Dorrell McGowan and Stuart McGowan, 1951). The accompanying text reads: "Hundreds of spectators gather on the sidelines as technicians prepare to photograph a parade scene in 'Tokyo File 212,' a Breakston-McGowan Production filmed in Japan for RKO Radio distribution." Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Since Edward Said’s foundational work, Orientalism has been singled out for critique as the quintessential example of Western intellectuals’ collaboration with oppression. Controversies over the imbrications of knowledge and power and the complicity of Orientalism in the larger project of colonialism have been waged among generations of scholars. But has Orientalism come to stand in for all of the sins of European modernity, at the cost of neglecting the complicity of the rest of the academic disciplines? In this landmark theoretical investigation, Wael B. Hallaq reevaluates and deepens the critique of Orientalism in order to deploy it for rethinking the foundations of the modern project. Refusing to isolate or scapegoat Orientalism, Restating Orientalism extends the critique to other fields, from law, philosophy, and scientific inquiry to core ideas of academic thought such as sovereignty and the self. Hallaq traces their involvement in colonialism, mass annihilation, and systematic destruction of the natural world, interrogating and historicizing the set of causes that permitted modernity to wed knowledge to power. Restating Orientalism offers a bold rethinking of the theory of the author, the concept of sovereignty, and the place of the secular Western self in the modern project, reopening the problem of power and knowledge to an ethical critique and ultimately theorizing an exit from modernity’s predicaments. A remarkably ambitious attempt to overturn the foundations of a wide range of academic disciplines while also drawing on the best they have to offer, Restating Orientalism exposes the depth of academia’s lethal complicity in modern forms of capitalism, colonialism, and hegemonic power.