Orientalism and the Place of Literature

Literary representations of "the East" from the Enlightenment through Modernism and their relation to changing conceptions of the meaning and value of "literature" itself. Thinking about "place" in representational, geopolitical, and institutional terms. Readings from the "Arabian Nights," Mary Wortley Montagu, Oliver Goldsmith, Coleridge, Byron, De Quincey, Kipling, Michael Ondaatje, and others; theoretical and historical perspectives from Said, Williams, Eagleton, and others.