Orientalism

describing Chinese people are inferior to the British. Other times, he compliments China, but possibly only for the purpose of justifying and promoting the opium trade. The memoir displays examples of the type of thinking part of the concept of Orientalism as defined by Edward Said. In 1400, neither the UK or Europe wasn’t richer than China. However, starting in 1700, China started to fall behind economically to the UK, eventually lead to a…

What remains of this dance is merely a conceptual idea of the body being a “medium” and her dancing as a form of “supernatural forces”, inviting demonic energy. The second Witch Dance (Orientalism), provides an even darker and deeper impression of Mary Wigman. There is a quote in which she describes herself, walking into her room looking into the mirror, and says “What it reflected was the image of one possessed, wild, and dissolute, repelling…

group in significant diversity that can be seen by differences in forms of religious expression, ancestral background, and how recently they arrived in the United States. Both groups have been seen and stereotyped in the West through the lens of orientalism. I feel that we covered religious pluralism in chapter 5 on page 128 and this information ties to the video. When the guys say that he said the lady why don’t dress like an American citizen the…

In the 1990’s where the film industry came to dominance, actors were cast to portray roles of racial minority characters conspicuously and blatantly. The concept of white washing, orientalism or cultural appropriation were not prompted into the minds of directors, actors, movie-goers or virtually anyone of the time yet. With this, there was barely or if any characters of colour being casted for roles that they were the basis of. This notion has since continued onto contemporary society today,…

Moreover, there is an orientalist paradigm each tourist carries and the narrator exposes this through how the tourist feels to be in Antigua, where the tourist feels ‘blessed’ and ‘free’ (Kincaid, 5). The feelings described are tied with an ironic tone that arriving in a place riddled with dilapidation from neglect should evoke these feelings, and these feeling are actually an expression of valorizing poverty and exoticizing the natural environment. The road is described as ‘in much need of…

The musical piece Flight of the Bumblebee is an orchestral interlude from opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan written by Rimsky-Korsakov in 1899 based on the poem of the same name by Aleksandr Pushkin. It comes as the prelude to Act III, where a prince rescues a swan which is attacked by a bumble bee. The composer professionally used instruments of the orchestra to create pictures from the story. The musical piece is a programmatic music in ternary form that is representing the sound of a bumblebee.…

“Isla” by Virgil Suarez is a powerful image of migration through the eyes of a young boy. Suarez uses this narrative, free-verse poem as a personal experience of his migration from Cuba. His reference to Godzilla helps the reader connect with his experience (Kirszner & Mandell, 2012). In the poem, Suarez begins by using allusions to make the poem more relevant to the reader. He references several children television programs putting the reader in a young mindset. The speaker is aware at an…

representations of Islamic history based upon fictional, Western images of the “Orient.” Despite Fernand Braudel’s attempts in writing an improved history on Islamic civilization, he still suffers from a significant Hegelian slant that includes Orientalism and Idealism. In contrast, Richard Eaton proposes a new method and vision of studying Islamic history, which consists of using social history and viewing the Muslim world as a global civilization, hence stripping away the European stereotypes…

On the night of October 19th, I attended an event co sponsored by the Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies department and the Franklin Humanities institute at Duke. Doctor Nicholas L. Clarkson joined us to inspire a discussion about the intersection between biopolitics, identity, citizenship and nationalism. To begin, Dr. Clarkson discussed the 2003 Department of Homeland Security memo signaling security personnel to be alert for terrorist who concealed weapons under women’s clothing. The…

In this paper, I will explore the connection between the ideas of Stuart Hall, Uma Narayan and Edward Said. During discussion my classmates and I realized how the three writers discussed similar themes in their work and I thought it was quite interesting. The three writers talk about the Western media’s depiction of people who belong from different ethnic backgrounds. The reason I am interested in this topic is because it is prevalent even today since the media portrays such people in a…