Orientalism and the Bible Lands: From Napoleon to Hollywood
Dr. Eitan Bar-Yosef
Thursdays 12-14, Fall & Spring semesters
Contact details
Conderence hour: Tuesdays 12-13, room 417A
Tel. 6461063
Course description
The growing involvement of the Western Powers in the Middle East, from the end of the eighteenth century onwards, allowed European and American travelers to tour the Bible Lands – the Holy Land, Egypt, and Mesopotamia – and thus rediscover territories and landscapes well familiar from their Biblical education. Building on the insights of postcolonial critics, and exploring a wide array of sources – from novels and travel accounts to popular exhibitions and Hollywood films – this course will trace the representation of these territories and their roles in the national cultures of the West.
Course requirements
Attendance & reading 10%
Class presentations, short responses and longer paper 30%
Final paper 60%
1. Edward Said and the Orientalism debate
Edward W. Said, “Introduction” + “Knowing the Oriental”, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (1978; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995), 1-28, 31-49.
Edward W. Said, “Orientalism Reconsidered”, Cultural Critique 1 (1985): 89-107.
Aijaz Ahmad, “Orientalism and After”, in Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (eds.), Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory (1993; Harlow: Prentice Hall, 1993), 162-171.
Recommended: Zachary Lockman, “Said’s Orientalism: A Book and its Aftermath”, Ch. 6 of Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 182-214.
2. Puritan typology: Jerusalem in England
Eitan Bar-Yosef, “Christian Walks to Jerusalem”, Ch. 1 of The Holy Land in English Culture 1799-1917: Palestine and the Question of Orientalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 18-60.
3. Puritan typology: Jerusalem in New England
Sacvan Bercovitz, “The Biblical Basis of the American Myth”, in Giles Gunn (ed.), The Bible and American Arts and Letters (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), 219-29.
John Davis, “The American Identification with the Holy Land”, Ch. 1 of The Landscape of Belief: The Holy Land in Nineteenth-Century American Art and Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 13-26.
Albert J. Raboteau, “Black Americans”, in Moshe Davis (ed.), With Eyes toward Zion - II : Themes and Sources in the Archives of the United States, Great Britain, Turkey and Israel (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1986), 311-322.
4. The Arabian Nights
Brian Alderson, “Scheherazade in the Nursery”, in Peter Caracciolo (ed.), The Arabian Nights in English Literature: Studies in the Reception of The Thousand and One Nights into British Culture (London: Macmillan, 1988), 81-93.
Michael Slater, “Dickens in Wonderland”, In Caracciolo (ed.), The Arabian Nights in English Literature, 130-142.
5. Writing the journey: images and themes
Anthony Trollope, “A Ride Across Palestine” (1860).
William Makepeace Thackeray, from Notes of a Journey From Cornhill to Grand Cairo (1846), Chs. 10-15.
Derek Gregory, “Scripting Egypt: Orientalism and the Cultures of Travel”, in Writes of Passage: Reading Travel Writing, ed. James Duncan and Derek Gregory (London: Routledge, 1999), 114–50.
John Barrell, John. “Death on the Nile: Fantasy and the Literature of Tourism, 1840–1860”, in Catherine Hall (ed.), Cultures of Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 187-206.
Recommended: Yehoshue Ben-Arieh, “Holy Land Views in Nineteenth-Century Western Travel Literature”, in Moshe Davis and Yehoshua Ben-Arieh (eds.), With Eyes Towards Zion – III: Western Societies and the Holy Land (Westport: Praeger, 1991), 10-29.
6. Writing the journey: gender and denomination
Yeshayahu Nir, “Protestant and Catholic Nuances”, from Ch. 4 of The Bible and the Image: The History of Photography in the Holy Land, 1839-1899 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), 103-107.
Billie Melman, “Feminizing the Landscape”, Ch. 9 of Women’s Orients: English Women in the Middle East, 1718-1918; Sexuality, Religion and Work (1992; 2nd ed. London: Macmillan, 1995), 210-231.
Recommended: Susan Bassnet, “Travel Writing and Gender”, in Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 225-41.
7. American Orientalism: Twain’s The Innocents Abroad
Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (1869).
John Davis, “The American Presence in the Holy Land”, Ch. 2 of The Landscape of Belief: The Holy Land in Nineteenth-Century American Art and Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 27-52.
Jeffrey Alan Melton, “Keeping the Faith in Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad”, South Atlantic Review 64/2 (1999): 58-80.
Sander L. Gilman, “Mark Twain and the Diseases of the Jews”, American Literature 65/1 (1993): 95-115.
From David Dorr, A Colored Man Around the World (1858).
8. Britain in the Middle East: Disraeli’s Tancred
Benjamin Disraeli, Tancred (1847).
Emily A. Haddad, “Digging to India: Modernity, Imperialism, and the Suez Canal”, Victorian Studies 47/3 (2005): 363-396.
Patrick Brantlinger, “Disraeli and Orientalism”, in Charles Richmond and Paul Smith (eds.), The Self-Fashioning of Disraeli 1818-1851 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 90-105.
Anthony S. Wohl, “’Dizzi-Ben-Dizzi’: Disraeli as Alien”, The Journal of British Studies 34/3 (1995): 375-411.
9. Egyptomania
Nicholas Daly, “That Obscure Object of Desire: Victorian Commodity Culture and Fictions of the Mummy”, Novel: A Forum on Fiction 28/1 (1994): 24-51.
Antonia Lant, “The Curse of the Pharaoh, or How Cinema Contracted Egyptomania”, October 59 (1992): 86-112.
Recommended: Melani McAlister, “‘The Common Heritage of Mankind’: Race, Nation, and Masculinity in the King Tut Exhibit”, Representations 54 (1996): 80-103.
10. The Orient as Spectacle I
John Davis, “Panoramic Imagery in the Early Nineteenth Century” and “Landscape, Photography, and Spectacle in the Late Nineteenth Century”, Chs. 3 and 4 of The Landscape of Belief: The Holy Land in Nineteenth-Century American Art and Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 53-97.
Shawn C. Malley, “Shipping the Bull: Staging Nineveh in the British Museum, 1849-1854”. Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 26/1 (2004): 1-27.
11. The Orient as Spectacle II
Timothy Mitchell, “The World as Exhibition”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 31/2 (1989): 217-236.
Eitan Bar-Yosef, from “Popular Palestine”, Ch. 3 of The Holy Land in English Culture 1799-1917: Palestine and the Question of Orientalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 136-165.
12. Millenarianism and colonialism
Milette Shamir, “‘Our Jerusalem’: Americans in the Holy Land and Protestant Narratives of National Entitlement”. American Quarterly, 55/1 (2003): 29-60.
Yaakov Ariel, “An Unexpected Alliance: Christian Zionism and its Historical Significance”, Modern Judaism 26/1 (2006): 74-100.
Recommended: Eitan Bar-Yosef, “Christian Zionism and Victorian Culture”, Israel Studies 8/2 (2003): 18-44.
13. 1948 and beyond
W. J. T. Mitchell, “Holy Landscape: Israel, Palestine, and the American Wilderness”. Critical Inquiry 26/2 (2000): 193–223.
Edward Said, “Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Victims”, Ch. 2 of The Question of Palestine (1979; New York: Vintage, 1992), 56-114.
Recommended: Melani McAlister, “The Good Fight: Israel after Vietnam, 1972-1980”, Ch. 4 of Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East since 1945 (2001; rev. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 155-197.
14. The Bible Lands in Hollywood
John C. Eisele, “The Wild East: Deconstructing the Language of Genre in the Hollywood Eastern”, Cinema Journal 41/4 (2002): 68-94.
Ella Shohat, “Gender in Hollywood’s Orient”, Middle East Report 162 (Jan.-Feb. 1990): 40-42.
Melani McAlister, “‘Benevolent Supremacy’: The Biblical Epic and the Dawn of the American Century, 1947-1960”, Ch. 1 of Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East since 1945 (2001; rev. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 43-83.
Ilana Pardes, “Moses Goes Down to Hollywood: Miracles and Special Effects,” Semeia 74: Biblical Glamour and Hollywood Glitz (1996): 15-31.
Recommended: Alice Bach, “‘Throw them to the Lions, Sire’: Transforming Biblical Narratives into Hollywood Spectaculars”, Semeia 74: Biblical Glamour and Hollywood Glitz (1996): 5-13.