PART I:
Alkabani, Feras. “The Meanings of Oriental Masquerade in T.E. Lawrence’s Arabian Ventures.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 44, no. 1, 2017, pp. 110–29, https://doi.org/10.1080/13530194.2016.1182423.
Amster, Ellen. “‘The Harem Revealed’ And the Islamic-French Family: Aline de Lens and a French Woman’s Orient in Lyautey’s Morocco.” French Historical Studies, vol. 32, no. 2, 2009, pp. 279–312, https://doi.org/10.1215/00161071-2008-020.
Bird, Dúnlaith. Travelling in Different Skins: Gender Identity in European Women’s Oriental Travelogues, 1850-1950. Oxford Univ. Press, 2012.
This book analyzes European women writers’ travelogues in the context of colonialism and orientalism. The feminist writers mentioned in this book paint an exaggerated picture of the sensual Oriental woman who has to conceal her sensuality due to cultural expectations. This book explores the interactions between feminism and orientalism through European women writers’ travelogues and displays how they perpetuated orientalist stereotypes to enforce their feminist agenda.
Burke, Edmund, and David Prochaska, editors. Genealogies of Orientalism: History, Theory, Politics. University of Nebraska Press, 2008.
This book aims to supplement the Anglocentric Orientalism of Edward Said, whose book “Orientalism” was the first of its kind. The editors bring attention to French Orientalist views especially prevalent in Algeria. Burke and Prochaska show how European biases regarding Muslims’ innate inferiority charged the works of French writers. A common theme in these works was the belief that indigenous people weren’t worthy of their land. For example, Eberhardt described the Sahara as “mysterious” and a “bewitching and magnificent expanse” while the Arab persona was one of “harshness and violence.”
De Nerval, Gérard. The Women of Cairo: Scenes of Life in the Orient. Vol. 2, Routledge, 2015.
Elmarsafy, Ziad, et al., editors. Debating Orientalism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Graham-Brown, Sarah. Images of Women: The Portrayal of Women in Photography of the Middle East 1860-1950. Columbia University Press, 1988.
Using early nineteenth-century photographs by European travelers and missionaries, Graham-Brown demonstrates how these works embody the Orientalist assumptions of the time. Images of Middle Eastern women from 1860-1950 are stereotypical in enforcing the idea of an exotic and erotic Orient. These images, some featuring lewd picture postcards of Algerian women sent by French settlers or visitors, exploit their subjects and are used by their originators to satisfy Western fantasies.
Graves, Robert. Lawrence and the Arabs. RosettaBooks, 1991.
Kabbani, Rana. Europe’s Myths of Orient: Devise and Rule. The Macmillan Press, 1986.
Kabbani delves into the erotic fantasies and myths that the West has developed about the East with a focus on the Victorian era. She explores how sexuality and voyeurism fueled romantic imaginations and art. She details the Victorian perception of the erotic East and how it peaked due to interest in slavery, dancing girls, and lechery. She makes an important point in linking these perverse views to asserting European superiority, more than a desire to escape from Victorian respectability.
Kramer, Martin S. Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001.
Kramer explores how Middle Eastern studies developed as a subject of American missionary efforts and the belief that Eastern customs could be reformed. Kramer intensely criticizes Middle Eastern studies in America as he views the discourse as an effort to influence change toward the values the United States prides itself on, such as liberal democracy and free markets. He reveals that the academic field was mostly influenced by the idea that Muslims had to “catch up” with the West and was built on modernization and development theory.
Lall, Ann J. M. Gendering the Orient: Women and the imagined India, California State University, Long Beach, United States -- California, 2006. ProQuest, http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/gendering-orient-women-imagined-india/docview/304911448/se-2.
This thesis explores how eighteenth-century British women writers contributed to colonial literature. Focusing on three texts, Lall criticizes how the writers rely on stereotypical assumptions about Indian culture and are limited in their descriptions of the Indian population. Lall often references the texts to demonstrate how the writers imagined an India that aligned with Western stereotypes and remained Eurocentric even when aiming to criticize the colonial project.
Lockman, Zachary. Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism. 2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Lockman aims to introduce readers to the history of Orientalism and Islamic studies as studied in the United States, specifically in the mid-twentieth century and onward. He details the emergence of “the West” as an identity and how this reconceptualization renders invisible many of the intercultural interactions that helped shape the West. He also highlights the fetishization of Orientals and their depiction as weak and passive in contrast with the powerful and male West.
Lockman, Zachary. Field Notes: The Making of Middle East Studies in the United States. Stanford University Press, 2016.
This book explores the history of Middle East studies and its trajectory as an academic field in relation to the transformations that American higher education underwent and other developments in American society and politics. This book describes how the view and study of the Middle East in the United States evolved with respect to major events like 9/11.
Long, Andrew C. Reading Arabia British Orientalism in the Age of Mass Publication, 1880-1930. First edition., Syracuse University Press, 2014.
Mahdi, Basma Harbi, and Suaad Abd Ali Kareem. “Representations of the Oriental Woman in Lord Byron’s ‘Turkish Tales.’” Al-Ustath Journal for Humanities and Social Sciences, vol. 223, no. 1, 2017, pp. 37–50, https://doi.org/10.36473/ujhss.v223i1.312.
This book explores the Western narrative of the Oriental woman as a victim through Lord Byron’s “Turkish Tales.” The tales feature a noble hero and a Muslim villain competing over a Middle Eastern woman. Even though Lord Byron attempts to villainize Middle Eastern men for their treatment of women in his stories, his perception of an Oriental woman is not so different. His description of the Turkish woman is ambiguous, and her only purpose is to serve as an object of desire and a catalyst to bring about a conflict between two men. Mahdi brings attention to this contradiction and challenges harmful stereotypes of the East perpetuated by Western literature.
Niyogi, Chandreyee, editor. Reorienting Orientalism. SAGE Publications, 2006.
This book is a collection of 11 essays that reevaluate the implications of Edward Said’s definition of “Orientalism” with a focus on India under British rule. Niyogi criticizes how orientalist archetypes are used as political propaganda. An example of this is “the poverty of India” being described as “age-old” and “endemic.” The portrayal of India’s poverty as a natural phenomenon is used as a political tool to justify the British state’s negligence in managing natural calamities like famine. The author criticizes how these oriental archetypes are used to push the colonialist agenda.
Pouillon, François, and Jean-Claude Vatin, editors. After Orientalism: Critical Perspectives on Western Agency and Eastern Re-Appropriations. Vol. 2, Brill, 2015.
This book features a collection of articles offered at an international symposium held in Paris in 2010-2011 and questions whether Orientalism was subservient to Western domination. An interesting argument involved the popular book “Arabian Nights”: the author noted that the book received its greatest recognition in Europe despite being considered “mid-level literature” in the Arabic world. Other arguments involve the invention of Oriental traditions like the Moroccan carpet by Western sources and the stereotypical and disparaging representations of Oriental societies in literature and popular culture.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Vintage Books, 1979.
Sidiqi, Mursal. “Experimenting on Oriental Women: Tracing Oriental Women’s Representations in Western Feminist Discussions of Bodily Autonomy and Desire in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.” University of California, Los Angeles, 2022.
This thesis analyzes Western feminist discourse from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and examines the role of the Oriental woman in discussions of Western women’s rights. The text analyzes three authors, one being Lady Mary. She shares her interactions with Turkish women to dismantle the licentious stereotype of Oriental women and displays how customs that appear outdated and patriarchal to the Western society give mobility and bodily autonomy to Turkish women. She argues that feminism and Middle Eastern cultures are not mutually exclusive.
Teo, Hsu-Ming. Desert Passions: Orientalism and Romance Novels. 1st ed., University of Texas Press, 2012, https://doi.org/10.7560/739383.
PART II:
My introduction to “orientalism” was through Lawrence of Arabia. I watched the movie in a class full of Americans, most of whom had never been to the Middle East. I remember feeling conflicted as, despite the beautiful cinematography, the movie felt strangely unfamiliar. The clothes, customs, and even mannerisms, were exaggerated and often plain inaccurate. Now I know that was the point.
From Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Orientalism describes how “the West” perceives “the East.” It clusters the Middle East, the Far East, and everything that is not the West into one. Before starting my research, all I knew about orientalism was that it involved overexaggerated and false stereotypes of Eastern cultures. As an expat, this was something I had encountered before, but not quite to the level I’ve now discovered it to be.
The aftermath of the Turkey-Syria earthquakes last year was the first time I felt the general American public’s indifference towards the Middle East. I shared multiple posts on social media showing the destruction and the millions of lives lost, urging people to donate. A lot of my friends texted me that day, not to check in on me but to ask if I was going to the party later that night. The disillusionment I felt at seeing how detached people were from matters related to the Middle East fueled my curiosity about how the West has historically perceived the foreign.
Reading through the discourse on orientalism, I was drawn to pieces that focused on the Middle East. An example of how orientalism grouped all Middle Eastern cultures together was Disney’s Aladdin, based on a story from “Arabian Nights.” The movie presented the silhouette of the Taj Mahal as Arabic architecture. The story of Aladdin was also based in Persia, not in Arabia, despite what the movie suggests. As portrayed by Hollywood, the assumption that all non-Western cultures are essentially one is a prime display of orientalism.
Lawrence of Arabia is another example of orientalist media. Arabs are portrayed as barbaric and undisciplined, and they need the British (in this case, Lawrence) to organize and lead them. It perpetuates the fundamental notion of orientalism: the weak and outdated Orient can only “catch up” with the changing world with the help of the strong and powerful West.
Although the powerful West and weak East narrative intrigued me, I found myself drawn to issues of gender and the different perceptions of Oriental men and women. When I thought about orientalism, gender was not the first thing that came to mind. As I continued my research, I came upon texts that focused on orientalism as it pertained to women. An interesting discussion was on how orientalism interacted with major movements like feminism. Spearheads of the Western feminist movement used Islamic women as inspiration to demand equality and rights. Women’s travel writings revealed their disgust towards the veil and other Islamic customs, which they used to incite fear in their contemporaries. Unless Western women fought for equality, they would regress to parallel Eastern women.
Meanwhile, the veil became the object of Western men’s fantasies. They fetishized the idea of uncovering the hidden, and unveiling became a symbol of the European conquest of the Orient. They wrote stories about saving the Oriental girl from the barbaric Middle Eastern villain, and yet these stories failed to portray her as anything more than an object of desire. The Western savior narrative was self-contradictory as the hero saved the girl from what he deemed as the inferior culture, only to preserve the same misogynistic attitude.
Growing up watching Hollywood, I was in awe of the modern and liberal America, ashamed of my own culture for not offering the same freedoms. Delving deeper into this topic made me realize how this divide is perpetuated not only in literature but also through popular culture and media, endorsing one way of living as the better choice when no culture is superior to another.
At this point in my research, the Western public’s gender-based perceptions and representations of the Orient in different forms of media intrigue me the most. I suspect that a meta-review of Western contemporary works such as literature, movies, and photography that portray Middle Eastern characters will help me best convey my message. The best way to understand one’s heuristics and preconceived notions is to analyze how these biases manifest in their creative work. I believe that comparing illustrations in different forms of media will construe a general perception of the Orient through the eyes of the Western public.