Orientalism, Art, and Architecture: From

This graduate seminar examines the intersections of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) with the study of art, architecture, and visual culture. It asks how the Saidian critique—conceived in a literary framework—has been applied, adapted, and contested in the analysis of visual forms from the eighteenth century to the present. Foregrounding aesthetics as a political language, the course traces how “Orientalist” motifs and styles have been negotiated, re-appropriated, and hybridized, often complicating the very notion of an identifiable “Orientalist” aesthetic. We map sites where Orientalism is expected, where it proves elusive, and where the label itself obscures more than it reveals, while testing the usefulness—and limits—of Orientalism as an analytic for visual and spatial evidence. Along the way, we consider whether “Orientalism” functions as an artistic style; questions of authorship and intention in painterly practice and studio/market contexts; late Ottoman self-representation (e.g., Osman Hamdi Bey); neo-Orientalist urbanism and the redevelopment of Mecca; religion’s place in visual Orientalism (crusade imaginaries, typologies of the “Saracen” and the “Jew,” and “sacred photography”); the weaponization of Orientalist codes in propaganda and heritage destruction; the category of “Islamic art” and its historiography; and the museum—especially the Metropolitan Museum of Art—as a site where collecting, classification, and display mediate knowledge and power. The seminar closes by considering decolonial proposals that refine, extend, or challenge the Saidian paradigm for art and architectural history.