Middlebury

HARC 0357

Orientalism & the Visual Arts

Orientalism and the Visual Arts
In this course we will consider the relationship between visual culture and the politics of knowledge. Comparatively examining a series of cross-cultural encounters in modern and contemporary art, we will ask how knowledge is visually codified, labeled, and displayed. The course will begin with a reading of Edward Said’s Orientalism. We will then examine a series of case studies in order to identify and compare strategies of both “representing the other” and “speaking back.” We will address notions of exoticism, cultural difference, authenticity, and native authority with a particular focus on the ways in which the visual arts construct notions of race and gender and difference in representations of the Middle East, and more specifically, the Arab world. Case studies, drawn from the late eighteenth century until today, will be focused in the discipline of art history and the geographical regions of primarily the Middle East and Africa, as well as Europe and the U.S. 3 hrs sem.
Subject:
History of Art & Architecture
Department:
History of Art & Architecture
Division:
Humanities
Requirements Fulfilled:
ART CMP HIS MDE

Sections in Spring 2023, School Abroad Japan (Tokyo)

Spring 2023

HARC0357A-S23 Seminar (Rogers)