Orientalism, Eroticism and Modern Visuality in Global Cultures / Edition 1

by Joan DelPlato, Julie Codell

Overview

In Orientalism, Eroticism and Modern Visuality in Global Cultures scholars look afresh at representations of nineteenth-century ’oriental’ bodies, inquiring deeply into their erotic dimensions, tracing their global dissemination at cross-cultural intersections of the visual and the political. Authors consider the impact of eroticized orientalist representations registered on racial and gendered bodies at historical moments across the globe in the media of photography, painting, prints and sculpture by contextualizing the visual within social practices, ethnography, literature, travel writing and the dynamics of imperialism. Authors examine orientalism’s politico-erotic import across not only imperial Britain and France but also throughout India and the Middle East initiating cross-cultural analyses of orientalism outside of Europe. Works studied include Orientalist and homoerotic works by canonic artists such as Ingres, Gérôme, Delacroix and Girodet, and lesser-known artists such as sculptor Raffaele Monti and painter Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann. Contributors explore Turkish and European writings, explorer Richard Burton’s self-fashioning, and popular Orientalist photography in India and the Middle East. Authors draw on methods from gender studies, semiotics, material culture and psychoanalysis to explore art, national identity, homoerotic subcultures, female agency, class, sexuality and colonialism. The book is directed to interdisciplinary scholars and students in art history, literature, history, and postcolonial studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781409463955
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	04/15/2016
Pages:	252
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Julie F. Codell is Professor of Art History at Arizona State University and Faculty Affiliate in Film and Media Studies, English, Gender and Women's Studies, and the Center for Asian Research, USA. Joan DelPlato is Professor of Art History, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, Great Barrington, MA, USA.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Notes on Contributors xiii

Acknowledgments xvii

1 Introduction: Rethinking Orientalism, Eroticism and Cross-Cultural Visuality 1

Julie Codell and Joan DelPlato

PART I: RACE, ETHNICITY AND THE ABJECT ORIENTAL

2 Menace at the Portal: Masculine Desire and the Homoerotics of Orientalism 25

James Smalls

3 Delacroix’s Invitation to the Jewish Wedding in Morocco 55

Albert Boime

4 Seeing through “The Veil Trick”: Heterotopic Eroticism in Monti’s Sculpture Circassian Slave at the Crystal Palace in 1851 83

Joan DelPlato

PART II: DISCOURSES OF PROJECTION AND CULTURAL CROSS-DRESSING

5 The Conceit of Burton’s Scar: Orientalism as Identity and Transgression 115

Julie Codell

6 Other Desires and the Desire of Others 141

Mary Roberts

PART III: CIRCULATING AND RE-CIRCULATING ORIENTAL EROTICS

7 Sapphism and the Seraglio: Refl ections on the Queer Female Gaze and Orientalism 163

Reina Lewis

8 European Fantasies and Awadhi Aspirations: From a “Turkish” Harem to a Lucknowi Zenana 181

Saleema Waraich

Works

Editorial Reviews

This is an important work. An admirably learned, focused, nuanced volume that follows a theme that is central, but rarely examined in-depth, through a fascinating variety of cultural and geographic locales-from Morocco to India. It should be read by anyone interested in artistic Orientalism and Exoticism, or the complexity and variety of desires they engage. Frederick N. Bohrer, Hood College, author of Orientalism and Visual Culture

From the Publisher