Alexandre Cabanel : Cléopâtre testant ses poisons sur des condamnés

French Orientalism: Culture, Politics, and the Imagined Other
The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Saturday, 29 October 2005, 10am-6pm
Julia Douthwaite (University of Notre Dame), keynote speaker

The Ph.D. Program in French at the City University of New York is hosting its annual student conference on the topic of French Orientalism. The conference is sponsored by the Ph.D. Program in French, the Henri Peyre French Institute, and the Doctoral Students' Council.

In Orientalism, Edward Said wrote of “the Orient as a locale requiring Western attention, reconstruction, even redemption. The Orient existed as a place isolated from the mainstream of European progress in the sciences, art, and commerce. Thus whatever good or bad values were imputed to the Orient appeared to be functions of some highly specialized Western interest in the Orient.”

Working from this standpoint and within the current global context, this conference will explore the French and Francophone construction of the Orient. The conference will feature papers in both French and English, from a variety of historical periods and academic disciplines.