Abstract

The Modern European History Workshop, the World History Workshop, the Modern British History Workshop and the Political and Intellectual History Workshop would like to invite all graduates to attend the symposium Orientalism, Said and After.

The papers presented at this symposium explore the relationship between East and West in terms of culture, politics, and empire, the historiography of the East by European scholars, and the use of the East as a way to emphasize a European identity. Traditionally defined as the study of Near and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages and peoples by Western scholars, Orientalism in a wider sense might also refers to the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists. Said’s Orientalism (1978) redefined the term through the unequal power relationship implied by the essentialising European gaze, arguing that the Foucauldian “durability” of hegemonic systems was inherent in all cultural transmission and appropriation between East and West. The symposium will consider “Orientialism” in different historical and historiographic contexts, through case studies and discussion of some recent debates about Said’s seminal representation of East-West relations.