Orientalism & Edward Said

August 15+ 18, 9-11am ET

Sophia Nasti

Edward Said's groundbreaking 1978 work Orientalism critically analyzes Western depictions of the broadly-construed East. It laid the foundation for postcolonial studies and remains a core text in multiple disciplines. This course begins with an overview of the main arguments of Orientalism in the context of their initial publication. We then consider how scholars have engaged Orientalism over the last forty years: taking Said's theories and building upon them, critiquing them, or recentering them in new discursive domains.

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Sophia Nasti is a PhD Candidate in South Asian studies at Harvard University specializing in Śaiva devotional literatures of medieval South India. Her research focuses on the role of genre in literary production and the relationship between the form and function of religious texts.