Synopses & Reviews
By focusing on a wide range of eastern writers who created influential bodies of work on western mores and religious and political institutions, and who, in so doing, reflected deeply on their own habits and assumptions, Historic Engagements with Occidental Cultures, Religions, Powers calls into question the all-too-common assumption that until the emergence of postcolonial thought the role of easterners has been to serve as objects of the gaze of westerners. This group of international authors amply demonstrates that the insights of postcolonial studies into human relations can be relevant in contexts at a remove spatially and temporally from western colonialism. The collection is unusual in the scope of its scholarship: chapters present compelling narratives that address life in Europe, in the United States, and in post-World War II Japan through the eyes of eastern intellectuals of the tenth through the twentieth centuries.The collection contributes to postcolonial scholarship on Hybrid identities while adding to the body of scholarship countering assumptions that the Oriental was acted upon but did not act, spoken about but did not reply.
Synopsis
This book explores centuries of power relations and imperial and civilizing rhetorics, overarching themes highlighted in these infrequently heard accounts by eastern travelers to the West. Considered in depth are evolutions in mental frameworks and practices that led to the emergence of anticolonial consciousness and strategies of protest.
About the Author
Anne R. Richards has published extensively in cultural studies and is currently preparing an edited collection of the writings of Moroccan feminist, Khadija Sabbar. Richards was a Fulbright teaching fellow in Tunisia from 2006-2007, a Fulbright ambassador from 2010-2013, and a Fulbright specialist in the Philippines in 2014. She is an Associate Professor of English at Kennesaw State University, USA.
Iraj Omidvar published the two-volume reference set Muslims and American Popular Culture with Anne R. Richards in 2014, and was a Fulbright teaching fellow in Tunisia in 2007. He is an Associate Professor of English and the Director of the University Honors Program at Southern Polytechnic State University, USA.
Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: 'Recovering Oriental Perspectives on the West'
Iraj Omidvar and Anne R. Richards
Part One: Central and Eastern Europe
Chapter One: 'Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Eastern Orthodoxy, and the Crystal Palace'
Roger Chapman
Chapter Two: 'Ubeydullah Effendi in the United States: The Impressions of an Ottoman Intellectual Regarding the 1893 Chicago World's Fair'
Birgül Koçak-Ostev
Part Two: Western Asia
Chapter Three: 'The Moor's First Sight: An Arab Poet in a Ninth-Century Viking Court'
Nizar Hermes
Chapter Four: 'Imperial Narratives: Islamic Concepts of Inclusion and Exclusion in Ibn Fadlan's Account of his Mission to the Bulgars'
Nina Berman
Chapter Five: 'Two Muslim Travelers to the West in the Nineteenth Century'
Ahmed K. Al-Rawi
Part Three: South Asia
Chapter Six: 'Ajaibat-e-Farang: Yousuf Khan Kambalposh's Metropolitan Journey and Ways of Seeing the West'
Masood Ashraf Raja
Chapter Seven: 'The International Colour Line Has Been Challenged:' Solidarity Networks in Indian Travel Narratives"
Anupama Arora
Chapter Eight: 'Reactions of Two Bengali Women Travelers: Krishnobhabini Das and Chitrita Devi'
Nupur Chaudhuri
Chapter Nine: 'Chinese Culture and Western Technology: Qi Zhaoxi's Writings about the United States'
Junjie Luo
Part Four: Southeast and Eastern Asia
Chapter Ten: 'Balinese Art, Religion, and Community in the Netherlands'
Ana Dragojlovic
Chapter Eleven: 'Shigetsu Sasaki: Zen Vagabond in the United States'
Claudia Milstead
Chapter Twelve: 'Un-canning the Canny: McDonald's Japan and the Mr. James Saga'
Ed Chan
Conclusion: 'Religion, Transculturalism, and Consciousness'
Anne R. Richards