30 Years After Orientalism

Framing the Other:
30 Years After Orientalism


9.30am – 6.30pm, Saturday, 26 April 2008 (with registration from 9.00am)

Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, The Courtauld Institute of Art
Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN

As recent political developments have once again brought to the fore the question of East/West relationships, the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism, comes as a suitable opportunity to re-examine the impact and currency of Said’s key arguments. This conference will focus on the influence of Said’s legacy to analyse visual culture as a crucial component of ‘Orientalism’s’ (and more generally imperialism’s) political self-justification, in the discursive construction of the ‘Other’. We will hear papers stemming from the nineteenth century, when imperialism was arguably produced by the development of racial thinking and the rise of European nationalism, to the turbulent present period. Addressing the vision of a ‘plural’ West, we wish to take up the issues raised by both obvious and surprising ‘Others’ with keynote lectures by Mary Roberts (University of Sydney) and Robert Fisk (The Independent).

To book a place: £15 (£10 concessions and Courtauld staff and students). Please send a cheque made payable to ‘Courtauld Institute of Art’ to: Research Forum Events Coordinator & Administrator, Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN, clearly stating that you wish to book for the ‘Orientalism conference'. For credit card bookings call 020 7848 2785/2909. For further information, send an email to ResearchForumEvents@courtauld.ac.uk.


PROGRAMME

09.00 - 09.30
Registration

09.30 - 10.00
Introduction

10.00 –12.00

SESSION 1

10.00 - 10.30
Elizabeth Mjelde (De Anza College, Cupertino) View from the Pacific Rim: Cultivating a Pedagogy of Disbelief

10.30 - 11.00
Peter Benson Miller (independent art historian and curator) Local Colour: French Painting and Racial Classification in the Nineteenth Century

11.00 - 11.30
Roger Blackley (Victoria University of Wellington) Another Colonial Orientalism: the Case of Charles Goldie

11.30 - 12.00
Evgeny Steiner (Sainsbury Institute, SOAS) A View from In-Between: Images of the Orient for the Western Audience Seen Through Russian Eyes

12.00 - 12.30
COFFEE/TEA

12.30 - 13.30
Keynote Lecture
Mary Roberts (University of Sydney) Crossing Boundaries, Testing Limits: Edward Said and Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture

13.30 - 14.30
BREAK FOR LUNCH

14.30 - 16.30
SESSION 2

14.30 - 15.00
Monia Abdallah (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) ‘Contemporary Islamic Art’: Inquiry into an Identity Construction by a Reader of Edward Said

15.00 - 15.30
Ian Horton (London College of Communication) Colonialist Stereotypes and Narratives in British Comic Books

15.30 - 16.00
Julia Walker (University of Pennsylvania) ‘Tribal Markings?’: Imagining Russia in the Reichstag Graffiti

16.00 - 16.30
Matthias Weiss (Freie Universität Berlin) Madonna as Odalisque? Some Remarks on ‘Legend’, a Photograph by Pierre et Gilles

16.30 - 17.00
TEA/COFFEE

17.00 - 18.00
Guest Lecture
Robert Fisk (The Independent)

18.00 - 18.30
Plenary Discussion

18.30
RECEPTION


Organised by: Aliya Abykayeva-Tiesenhausen and Melanie Vandenbrouck


Research Forum
The Courtauld Institute of Art
Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN

Tel: 020 7848 2909/2785
E-mail: researchforum@courtauld.ac.uk
www.courtauld.ac.uk

Currently at The Courtauld Gallery
Renoir at the Theatre: Looking at La Loge
21 February - 25 May 2008