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This article investigates into Orientalism in Disney’s Caro, Niki, dir. 2020. Mulan. Orlando, FL: The Walt Disney Company. and its resistant reading on Chinese social media platform Douban. It adopts a qualitative method to discipline data collected from Douban, then analyzing them in light of Stuart Hall’s articulation theory and Henry Jenkins’ ‘collective intelligence’. The analysis first reveals two ‘articulated’ Orientalist discourses in the film undergirded by a form of ‘new racism’, which serves to perpetuate the existing racial and gender hierarchies in the West–East power matrix. Then it shows how Douban users’ collective intelligence can potentially ‘disarticulate’ and ‘rearticulate’ Orientalism through a kind of microphysical, collective rewriting. The research argues that both disarticulation and rearticulation are a means by which Douban users indulge the civic imagination for alternative geopolitics in popular culture representation; compared with disarticulation, their rearticulatory practice is less effectual due to the inclusion of self-conflicting discursive elements, which ironically lay bare traces of their own discursive formation. This irony, this article suggests, calls into question the dominant-resistant binary paradigm that predominates current media reception studies. The article concludes by rethinking Orientalism and its Douban resistance in light of ‘Chineseness as identity work’, which deconstructs the oppositional paradigm and enlightens Orientalist film studies in global contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay investigates the representation of Indians and Nepalese Gurkhas of the British Indian Army in Polish Second World War memoirs. It argues that by focusing on the Other's social, religious, and physical differences, the authors constructed an exoticised image of the South Asians that contributes to the perception of war as a site of Orientalism. Since the Poles faced the British imperial army apparatus that manipulated the relations with the Other through its hierarchical organisation, the analysis explores the power relations implicated in the Polish-South Asian encounters. The study is based on excerpts from twenty memoirs written by soldiers of the Polish Armed Forces who cooperated with the British Indian Army in North Africa, the Middle East, and Italy. It is primarily concerned with manners, customs, and appearance of the South Asians to reflect the authors' emphasis on those components of their Otherness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1876, Moroccan Sultan Moulay Hasan sent a delegation to Britain to study artillery and return with a specimen of modern weaponry. This article examines Driss Jaaidi's report on the journey to Britain through the theoretical lens of Occidentalism, which offers a counter-narrative to Western Orientalism. Jaaidi's account, produced within the diplomatic context of Moroccan–British relations, diverges from traditional Orientalist texts, offering a respectful and admiring depiction of British modernity. By focusing on technological advancement, industrialization, and mass urban life, Jaaidi's travelogue emphasizes observation without condescension, contrasting the estrangement found in Western accounts of the East. This study explores how Occidentalism allows non-Western travellers to view the West through a lens of curiosity and respect, fostering a narrative that is forward-looking and temporally progressive. The observer's language, shaped by an Occidentalist perspective, reflects a register of praise and awe rather than alienation and distortion. The present text suggests that while Orientalism views the East as a relic of the past, Occidentalism, in contrast, portrays the West as a vision of the future – a futuristic artefact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that early modern European assessments of Chinese astronomy and, accordingly, antiquity were largely shaped by local concerns about conflicting schemes of political order. Exploring a little-studied controversy between the Anglican vicar and orientalist George Costard and the French Jesuit in Beijing Antoine Gaubil, the article examines the political stakes involved in promoting or rejecting Chinese astronomical chronology in Georgian Britain and Qing China, respectively. For Whig Anglicans, accepting Chinese astronomical chronology risked legitimizing the "despotic" political system that produced it. Conversely, for Jesuits in China, overtly rejecting Chinese astronomy and antiquity imperiled missionaries' lives and the very survival of the mission. Eighteenth-century European political discourses thus both shaped and were subtly shaped by debates about Chinese astronomical practices and their relationship to antiquity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The comics Ramayan 3392 AD are the only major futuristic adaptation of the Indian epic Rāmāyaṇa. Scholars have stated that the Indian element in the comics has been effaced so that the series could cater for international audiences versed on American pop culture. However, global concepts have often been appropriated by contemporary Indian nationalistic discourses. I analyse Ramayan 3392 AD through discourse analysis and the frameworks of Orientalism and re-Orientalism to conclude that, even though globalised, the elements in Ramayan 3392 AD create antithetical representations of India and the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the authors give an edition of an article by the famous Orientalist Martin Hartmann (1851–1918), one of the founding fathers of the journal Die Welt des Islams , accompanied by an introduction and commentaries. In Hartmann's text, which has remained unpublished, he comments on the possible consequences of the Russo-Japanese War (1904/05) and its outcome for Japan's relationship with the Islamic world in general and the Muslims of China in particular. Hartmann takes a clear stance here against the Russian Empire on the one hand, but also against the policies of the European powers towards Japan on the other, and urges a prudent approach to the victor of the aforementioned war. This should be understood, among other things, against the background of the problematic relations between the German Empire and Japan since the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95) and the German Empire's efforts to push Japan out of China. The original manuscript of this unpublished article is kept in the archives of the University of Halle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Logos: A Journal, of Religion, Philosophy Comparative Cultural Studies & Art (08687692) is the property of Logos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This essay draws on Stuart Hall's theory of articulation by examining the writings of Edward Henry Palmer. Palmer (1840-82) was a scholar and man of letters widely known in Victorian Britain for his Middle Eastern travels and his studies of Arabic culture and literature at Cambridge University. Palmer's writings on Middle Eastern society, poetry, history, and religious traditions allowed him to develop critiques of dissenting voices iii Britain, mainly those of atheists and working-class communities. He also addressed fears of Islam at a time when Britain was concerned about safe access to Middle Eastern routes to India-a time marked by Christian-Muslim clashes in Eastern Europe and Muslim rebellion in India. By examining how Self and Others were articulated in non-reductionist, non-essentialist ways, this essay reveals that Victorian debates about religion, empire, and material progress shaped and were shaped by British encounters with the Middle East. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study critically analyses how the film industry shapes cultural norms and values, particularly through political agenda-setting. Using Edward Said's concept of orientalism and neo-orientalist discourse, it examines Hollywood's portrayal of Iran and Iranians. While past research has focused on dominant themes, this paper explores 'minor moments' linked to Iran and 'minor characters' identified as Iranians in films where the central narrative is unrelated. By addressing these depictions, the paper seeks to understand Hollywood's role in shaping perceptions of Iranians as non-Arab, Muslim, oriental 'others'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political and popular tropes portray Muslims as monolithically, uniquely, and inherently patriarchal and misogynistic—a phenomenon of which Muslims are acutely aware. This study asks whether and how Islamophobic tropes influence Muslims' gender ideologies. Using life history interviews with Muslim Americans, we find a diversity of gender beliefs, challenging the discourses that frame Muslims' gender ideologies as monolithic. Four major typologies emerge in our data: Loyalist Complementarians, Patriarchal Reactionaries, Critical Egalitarians, and Reformist Egalitarians. These beliefs are multifaceted and are composed of a dialogic exchange between beliefs toward gender relations, perceptions of Islamic doctrine, and negotiation with what we call the Orientalist gaze. Each group navigates how their ideas about gender fit into or challenge a broader society that is scrutinizing Muslims, and each group articulates their gender beliefs through and against Islamophobic discourse, a process akin to walking an Orientalism tightrope. Plain Language Summary: Walking the Orientalism Tightrope: How Muslim Americans Construct their Gender Ideologies This article summarizes four ways that Muslim Americans think about gender. We argue that each mode is defined, in part, by how it responds to the stereotype that Muslims and Muslim communities are particularly gender oppressive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, the geopolitical domination of the United States remained almost unquestioned. However, other countries have emerged as poles of influence in recent years, including China and Brazil. Despite this, cultural and media interaction between the two countries is still limited and often mediated by the United States. This paper explores the algorithmic representation of China by the video streaming platform Netflix and argues that the company acts imperialistically by seeking to establish monopolistic control of the global Internet television market and promoting biases that we call 'algorithmic orientalism'. By presenting China to the Brazilian public through this lens, Netflix plays the role of cultural gatekeeper that continues to promote hegemonically American worldviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autocracies and their practices have figured prominently in modernity's making and associated sociologies, but in the 21st century the discourse of StrongMen has surged, coming to dominate our "attention economy." We consider its various expressions alongside its articulations referencing multiple spaces and consider it a "floating signifier" that appears to explain but in fact distracts from deeper causalities and possible effects of autocratic governance. In this knowledge cultural sociology, we explore how the concept of StrongMen works within nations, with antipodes, and in networks across global and historical conjunctures. We focus in the end on Erdoğan's 2023 re-election and Putin's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, identifying not only the practices that make them StrongMen, but also how the very concept becomes part of the toolkit implicated in recognizing their autocratic practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Once broadly applied, the term "tribe" has been discredited and is now rarely used in the social sciences. Critics argue that the concept is vague, is evocative of primitive and backwards connotations, and has been inappropriately applied to societies that are not "tribal." While these criticisms are well-founded and legitimate, I argue in this Perspective piece that we must not abandon the study of tribes in the Arab world. The concept of "tribe" continues to be salient for Arab citizens and one that they aptly assign to themselves. To address criticisms of previous studies, I offer three ways to reform scholarly pursuit on tribes: (1) adopting a thin conception of tribe (2) treating the concept as a dynamic not static unit and (3) being led by on-the-ground reality and not by theoretical biases regarding the applicability of this term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International student mobility (ISM) to China is an underexplored topic, especially as it relates to mobility emanating from the Global North. Between 2019 and 2020, we interviewed 25 international students originally from Europe, North and South America, and Oceania and, using thematic analysis, analysed their decisions to study in China. The results show that these young people's international migration patterns were motivated by a strong desire to search for a sense of home, cultural adventure, personal growth, authenticity, and abundant opportunities in China. In this light, we argue that international students' migration decision‐making is intertwined with their imaginaries of and imaginative frames for China, which various agents formulate at the intersection of global, national, and local contexts. In the process, we reveal a geographical imaginary of ISM that has been overlooked in the existing literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Leïla Sebbar's engagement with colonial-era orientalist iconography in her 2007 text Métro: instantanés, a collection of literary snapshots of scenes glimpsed in the Parisian metro dating from 1997 through 2006. Whereas critics have frequently affirmed that Sebbar's evocations of orientalist visual artefacts work to subvert orientalist discourse, the author proposes that a number of these snapshots constitute a largely uncritical reinscription of contemporary formulations of orientalist discourse. In particular, the author analyses Sebbar's portraits of French Muslim girls and women in relation to debates regarding the political, social and cultural meaning of Islamic headscarves. Through a comparative analysis of Métro: instantanés and Sebbar's Mes Algéries trilogy (2004–2008), the author argues that the former betrays a nostalgia for a past era of Franco-Arab political and cultural expression, one that inflects her portraits of French Muslim girls and women at the turn of the century. These portraits are not the neutral, documentary objects that their form suggests, but rather Sebbar's personal vision of contemporary France, one that significantly overlaps a neo-orientalist and neo-colonial imaginary in which the bodies of French Muslim girls and women threaten the values and security of the Republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research is the property of Intellect Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study investigates the impact of media on color sense: our ability to see different colors and use them to interpret the world. Specifically, we examine the role of color in the cultural construction of the Orient—an 'imagined geography' used to justify colonial domination—in two turn-of-the-twentieth-century types of color(ed) photographs: photochromes, where a printer added color, and autochromes, where colors were captured during exposure. While most research on visual Orientalism has focused on content, we use machine learning methods to study the most important formal element of visual Orientalism: color. After using K-means clustering to extract sixteen dominant colors from each photograph in our dataset, we train three different random forest classification algorithms to make a distinction between (A) the two color media (B) photochromes of the Orient and the Occident; and (C) autochromes of the Orient and the Occident. Subsequently, we apply Shapley Additive Explanations, an explainable AI method, to interpret the output of the classifiers. This allows us to examine how specific features (colors) impacted the classifiers' predictions. While the algorithm can easily separate photochromes from autochromes (0.95) and Oriental from Occidental photochromes (0.93), it struggles with the same task in the autochrome collection (0.68). These findings support three interconnected conclusions: (1) color sense became mediated in the late nineteenth century, (2) in photochromes, the presence and absence of specific colors was a vital aspect of visual Orientalism, (3) the autochrome, where color was derived from light, provided a more objective picture of countries in the near and middle East than the photochrome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mes’adet Bedirhan was an eloquent author who wrote for the pioneer Ottoman feminist journal called Kadınlar Dünyası (Women’s World) published in Istanbul between 1913 and 1921. She wrote multiple pieces in the Ottoman Turkish and French editions of the journal in 1913–1914. Although very few traces of her life story exist in the historical accounts of the era, she left a mark in this world through her own act of writing. This article not only generates new information about her life but also endeavors to reflect on the overall content of her essays. Through these essays, she showed Ottoman women that they can change their destiny once they discovered their innate strength. She not only underlined women’s agency in contesting their unequal position in the society but also criticized her feminist sisters in the west for representing the Ottoman women as silent and submissive objects of pleasure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the concept of orientalism and its relation to Christian pilgrimage in modern times, and the views of Western Christian religious figures, historians, researchers, and pilgrims to share their experiences with Christians who want to make a journey to the Holy Land, monks’ caves or other holy places around the world. The benefits of Christian pilgrimage in their view will be spiritual more than physical by visiting the Christian pilgrim's true places of pilgrimage. The invitation here is to teach Christians the religious ceremonies that were done by the early pilgrims who had followed Christ's steps and his apostles who took the Bible as their guide. According to them, pilgrimage is not for fun or entertainment but for worship and forgiveness, an idea that lasted for a long time until now. This study included an introduction, a definition of orientalism, and an explanation of the western Orientalists’ point of view of pilgrimage, by giving examples of pilgrims' stories who made their journey whether in reality or in a dream. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our social problems cannot be understood without adequately explaining the political, social, economic and intellectual transformations that have taken place since the foundation of the Republic two centuries ago. In our country, the issue of social change is generally discussed within the framework of the concepts of Westernization, modernization, and secularization. Post-colonialism, on the other hand, develops alternative explanations for the transformations experienced by non-Western societies by criticizing the West's privilege of being the subject of universal history. With its history of more than half a century, the theory has become a critical tool in examining relations of domination in various fields of social sciences, as well as the experiences of colonized societies. This theory is functional in terms of analyzing Turkey's 19th and 20th century modernization experience, being a valid intellectual basis for the search for nativism against the West and becoming a "subject". The aim of the study is to examine the modernization discourse developed during the republican period with the theory in question. In the study, the texts of Niyazi Berkes, one of the important representatives of the modernization discourse in social sciences, were selected as a sample and these texts were subjected to discourse analysis with an interpretive approach. In the conceptual part of the study, the elements of post-colonial theory and post-colonial reading are summarized with their historical development, content, and criticisms. In the review part, Berkes's modernization discourse was evaluated in terms of criticism of orientalism and Eurocentrism and cultural hybridity. As a result of the study, it was determined that, despite its limitations, post-colonialist reading maintains its validity and currency in examining the modernization ideas and discourses of non-Western societies. Despite this, it is among the results of the study that the modernization discourse remains indifferent to the criticism of Orientalism and Eurocentrism and does not pay attention to cultural negotiation and hybridity approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several English‐language adaptations of the Indian epic Rāmāyaṇa have been published since the beginning of the 21st century. The epic has been regarded and recreated as a metonym for the Indian nation. Contemporary versions have often referred to Indian geography and have tried to poetically or literally associate mythic spaces with real ones. In this paper, I use discourse analysis in order to study some of the most influential 21st‐century English‐language retellings of the Rāmāyaṇa. I conclude that these and other versions of the epic describe India as a regionally divided nation which can ultimately be united through national geography, its association with mythology and the contrast between the geography of India and that of foreign nations. In this sense, I regard these contemporary versions as a 'literary pilgrimage' through which Indian readers can get to know the geography of their nation and regard it as sacred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the history, current state and prospects of Oriental and African Studies (OAS) in modern Russia. It explains why there are several educational models of OAS at bachelor's and master's degree in Russia and describes the current situation where 22 Russian universities offering OAS programmes produce graduates with mostly only two majors, i.e., historians and philologists. The article addresses the position of OAS among modern Russian scientific disciplines. Another aim is to trace the historical logic of the development of Oriental Studies and related African Studies in Russia, placing the discourse in the context of the Eastern Question, or the political fate of the Ottoman Empire. Finally, it identifies and justifies some current alternative trends in the development of OAS in Russian education and science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While recounting Noah's story, the Qurʾān refers to a strange narrative motif : an oven (tannūr) from which some water overflows. Insofar as such a motif is hardly explained by the text, it has been and continues to be an issue for the reader. Muslim scholars, who were the first to deal with the Qurʾān, noted the difficulty and tried to solve it by relying on semantics and providing various etiological accounts. Centuries later, orientalists believed they had found the key to this enigma in the rabbinic heritage. But as early as 1867, by publishing his edition of an Arabic catena, Paul de Lagarde drew the attention of the academic world to fragments attributed to Hippolytus of Rome mentioning, in Noah's story, an overflowing oven. For several reasons, it was not until 1995 that a connection was explicitly made between these fragments and the Qurʾan. In the following study, we will pursue this line of research and try to determine the relationship of these fragments to the quranic statement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution explores in what ways the Kurdish experience may be called "colonial" and, by extension, what decolonizing Kurdish studies would or could amount to. Specifically, it explores whether and to what extent Kurdish vernacular learning may be qualified as "Indigenous learning" as it appears in decolonial critiques. The article suggests a genealogical approach to the epistemic dimensions of coloniality to explicate the radical historicity of knowledge and to make visible relations of domination and resistance in the field of knowledge and learning. Early modern Kurdish vernacular learning, it will be argued, was produced under the domination of Persian and Arabic, and to some extent it amounted to heresy, that is, an act of symbolic resistance. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the vernacularization of Kurdish language and learning in the seventeenth‐century Ottoman Empire and in Mollah Mahmûdê Bayazîdî's encounter with nineteenth‐century Russian imperialism and Orientalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Caste has been a contentious subject in Sikhism. While the Sikh theological canons have vehemently opposed its practice, it continues to be present among the Sikhs, including its discriminatory culture. The obvious response of the Sikh leaders and scholars has been to ask for 'a moral self-criticism'. The issue thus becomes praxeological, a matter of aligning 'practice with the theory'. This is a simplistic response. Such a narrative also does not allow us to raise relevant questions about the contemporary framings of caste as a hegemonic construct. It also does not permit us to engage with its diverse empirics among the Sikhs and its other contextual dynamics. The paper argues that to move forward, we need to critically explore the currently popular notions of caste, most of which are drawn from orientalist and colonial constructs. They present India as being a land of Hindus and the practice of caste being its essential feature. The Indian nationalists enthusiastically endorsed such a framing because they found it useful for making claims about India's cultural unity. Drawing from a large volume of historical and empirical writings, the paper identifies problems with such a narrative of caste which sees it as a purely religious practice. It further argues for a need to look at the materiality of caste. Religious prescripts, such as Manusriti, function as 'ideological signals' that promote and legitimize it. In contrast, the ideological signals provided by the Gurus and the Sikh religious canons are unambiguously opposed to such ascription-based hierarchies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the various ways in which pacificists and socialists in France responded to the 'yellow peril' from the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) to the end of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). I identify and examine four different attitudes they developed towards the 'yellow peril'. On the one hand, some pacificists and socialists perceived it as a reality and used it as a means of exposing the problems of expansionism but differed on their views of what Asia would become for the West: whereas pacifists like Paul d'Estournelles de Constant invoked Asia as a potential existential threat, certain socialists welcomed 'yellow' workers as future comrades. On the other hand, there were people who viewed the 'yellow peril' as a myth or some sort of ideological smokescreen. Roughly speaking, they fell into two groups: socialists who treated it as a set of false ideas created to justify Tsarist imperialism, which practically led them to embrace Japanese imperialism, and revolutionary syndicalists who, opposing capitalist exploitation and expansionism in general, dismissed it as part of bourgeois ideology. Thus, I ultimately argue that the 'yellow peril' was less of an imperialist ideology consisting of negative racial stereotypes about East Asians than a versatile concept that was used against as well as for racial stereotyping and expansionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the view that antecedents to modern racism can be found in medieval Europe's depictions of Moors, Saracens and the prophet Muhammad, this article demonstrates that representations of Muslims from the seventh to the fifteenth centuries were both respectful and resentful, lacking the kind of coherence necessary to show a pattern of racialisation. Rather than reflecting a structural continuity with the Orientalism that emerged in the nineteenth century, the representations that prevailed were the product of the power interests at play in specific historical and geographical contexts. Certainly, there was prejudice, xenophobia and ethnocentrism, sometimes taking forms that superficially resemble modern racisms. But only with the rise of various European powers as empires in the modern era did it become possible to ideologically and structurally racialise Muslims. Thus, 'race' should be seen as a modern development that accompanied the rise of capitalism and European colonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the turn of the twentieth century, the Kurds in Iran have faced various forms of linguistic exclusion. As part of a genealogical project, this article aims to track the lineages of this exclusion. The linguistic exclusions are inscribed in a field of discursivity, which, tracking one of its lineages, turns our attention to the orientalist interventions. The article discusses two complementary projects: the authentication of the Persian language and the othering of the Kurdish language. These projects were made possible by the hegemony of territorial and linguistic discourses over orientalist studies in Iran. Orientalists proposed a periodization of Iranian languages, dividing them into old, middle, and modern eras, with Persian represented as the sole language that has ever existed throughout history, based on their decoding of ancient manuscripts. Meanwhile, the Kurdish language was completely marginalized, and Persian was represented as the essence of all Iranian languages and, consequently, as the language of all Iranians. As a result, an ontological and epistemic horizon emerged, on which all subsequent instances of othering of the Kurds became possible. Finally, the article also examines the ways in which the Kurds have resisted the linguistic exclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars commenting on the reception of the historian and theorist 'Abd al-Raḥmān Ibn Khaldūn (1332–1406) in modern South Asia have held that it was orientalists and Westernised intellectuals rather than indigenous intellectuals who popularised him in the region. Contesting these impressions, I argue that local intellectuals displayed their agency in using the historian's work to respond to various crises of colonial modernity. They read, translated, and appropriated Ibn Khaldūn to seek inspiration for modern Muslim nationalism, as validation for sectarian convictions and the rhetoric of Islamic reform, and to resist colonial and Hindu revivalist narratives of despotic Muslim rule in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Babylon Center for Humanities Studies is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Arab International Journal of Library & Information is the property of Arab Institution of Knowledge Management and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study aims to explore the issues of Islamophobia and Christian ideology prevalent in Spanish society in the 16th and early 17th centuries by examining the slave trade conducted by Barbary corsairs and the hard lives of Christian captives depicted in the literary works of Miguel de Cervantes, and to highlight his efforts to overcome the clash of civilizations between Christianity and Islam. To achieve this goal, first, the study delves into the historical context of the clash between Spain and Islam in the Mediterranean during the 16th century. Cervantes, who took part in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, was captured by Barbary corsairs on his return from military service and spent five years as a captive in the Bagnio of Algiers. The painful experience left indelible marks on his works. This study focuses on the dual meaning of Orientalism in his works. One prevalent form of Orientalism in Spain and Europe during that period portrayed Muslims as barbaric and anti-Christian. However, Cervantes presented an alternative Orientalism to propose a pathway to co-existence, rather than conflict, between civilizations and religions. Therefore, this study explores how Cervantes, even though he himself was a victim of the clash of civilizations, sought to overcome the confrontations and conflicts in his works, rather than perpetuating the prevalent Islamophobia of his time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some Orientalists believe that Imam Ali (AS) used violence against the Jews of Bani Qurayza and Khawarij. Vaglieri is one of these Orientalists who underlined the violence of Imam Ali (AS). To show how compatible this claim is with historical sources, the present paper tried to test Vaglieri's historical theory using a descriptive-analytical approach, and came to the conclusion that Vaglieri's theories have both strengths and weaknesses and should be further validated. Vaglieri interpreted Imam Ali's encounter with the Jews of Bani Qurayza as a massacre, but he did not pay attention to the causes and origins of that encounter and the betrayals of the Jews, and considered the encounter of Imam (AS) with the Khawarij as slaughter. Yet, he has not mentioned the Imam's appeasement with this sedition. Also, his view is imbued with the idea that Imam Ali (AS) did not use any other tools and methods in confronting them and only used the sword weapon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Academic Journal of Philosophy / Felsefi Düşün is the property of Pinhan Yayincilik and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The study aimed to examine the development of literary criticism throughout its history from structuralism to postmodernism, using Edward Said's criticism of Orientalism as a case study. A discourse- grounded analysis approach was used to analyze critical texts and articles related to this development. The results showed, according to Said, that the traditional Western depiction of the East is biased and based on power relations, which influenced postcolonial philosophy and the literary canon (Smith, 2018). Said sought to expose biases in Western literature’s depiction of the East (Jones, 2016). His writings have sparked debate about the role of the critic in shaping literary discourse, shifting critical focus toward questions of power, representation, and identity, and increasing opportunities for underrepresented groups to have their voices heard (Brown & Johnson, 2019). Said's critique of Orientalism has influenced contemporary literary criticism, opening the door to a more diverse and comprehensive literary study (Garcia & Lee, 2020). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will address the question of the Borgesian approach towards writing multilayered philosophical fiction. It will attempt to stratify his artistic prescription towards constructing deep philosophical testimonies which amalgamate different historical and fictional narratives. The latter will be thoroughly examined in his oeuvres which introduced Islamic heritage specifically, wherein the researchers argue that the fascination which Islam seems to exert on Borges, écrivain préféré of Derrida is far less concerned with remote isolated small desert villages, minarets, raging sultans, swords, harems of T.E. Lawrence and Richard Burton and so on. It is rather drawn on more advanced methods of intellectual anatomy that cites supposed informants who are knowledgeable enough to define figures like Omar El-Khayyam, Averroes, Ibn-Khaldun, and El-Baladhouri. The findings show that the authority is often authorial, and sometimes dependent on complex narratological weaves in addition to standard Orientalist package.

The article explores the image of the Altai Mountains in English travelogues from the second half of the 19th to the early 20th centuries within the context of Orientalism discourses. During the imperial period, this territory of Western Siberia belonged to the category of the so-called “cabinet lands” through which Russian trade with China passed, yet it was poorly developed by the Russian state. From the mid-19th to the early 20th century, Western European discourses exhibited a persistent interest in the Altai Mountains, particularly its southern part, where the Russo-Chinese border ran, populated by Mongols, Kazakhs, and Altaians. Therefore, it is necessary to elucidate not only the reasons for such interest but also the main narratives that were formed about this land within the context of cultural and political processes. The work of P. A. Chikhachev, Journey to the Eastern Altai, written in French and published in Paris, shaped the primary concepts of the Altai Mountains — as of the Second Switzerland, little known to Europeans, and inhabited by savages at the lowest stage of civilization. In the early 20th century, English travelogues by Thomas and Lucy Atkinson, E. Demidov, and H. Swayne revealed another aspect of the wild Altai — as of the area for free hunting and self-realization for European aristocrats on the Russo-Mongolian border. This firmly established the stereotype of the southern Altai as a typologically Eastern “terra incognita” inhabited by Orientalized Russians and Asian savages.

The general autonomy of Central European authors from a Western power agenda as postulated by the mainstream critique of Orientalism is well known. At the same time, scholars have paid much less attention to the attitude of the modern Hungarian, Czech, Polish, and Slovenian corpus vis-à-vis Shi’ism,a narrow branch of the subject of Orientalism. This study argues that a certain bias in this context can be identified on the part of regional academics of the twentieth century, which might be explained by personal preferences for Sunni Orthodoxy. Simultaneously, this paper seeks to explore the reasons for such a tendency within the context of specific historical development at the frontiers. To this end, it presents case studies that juxtapose the relevant experiences with the classic Orientalist criticism of Western intellectual life introduced by scholars such as Edward Said, Talal Asad, Joseph Massad, and Mahmood Mamdani.

In contemporary British academic institutes and centers, a range of research is conducted on the Islamic world, including Shiite studies. British researchers have for long asserted that their approach to Islamic and Shiite studies is historical, claiming that unlike earlier anti-Islamic research by the Church, they just aim to learn more about Islamic and Shiite beliefs, without engaging in theological debates about Shiism and its doctrines. Contemporary Western, and particularly British, scholars claim to diverge from evangelical and colonialist approaches and instead adopt a scholarly and academic approach. However, it appears that think tanks in the UK that shape general policies may not align with the claims made by these researchers. We examine these two approaches by draw ing upon image-making theory and its application in individual and organizational decision-making. On this theory, images are grounds of such decisions, and reality only makes sense within such images. I argue that “images” form the basis of Islamic and Shiite studies. Given this perspective, we address the following question: Is the approach to Shiite studies in the UK consistent with the claims made by British scholars?

The reinterpretation of the architectural language of previous periods is commonplace in architecture and art history. Over the centuries, architectural thinking has consistently oscillated between two distinct trends: consciously revisiting architectural styles or deliberately deviating from them to endorse innovative design forms. In this particular context, the present article delves into the manifestation of the concept of "Orientalism" in both architecture and art during the French colonisation of Algeria, specifically spanning the late 19th century to the early 20th century. This historical period was characterised by a historicist approach, giving rise to what is commonly referred to as the neo-Moorish style. The city hall in Biskra (southeast of Algeria) was selected as a case study for an in-depth exploration of the subject of this article. Through a historical approach, this study has a twofold purpose. Firstly, it aims to highlight Algeria's significant contribution to the history of architecture by revealing one of its most important periods, that of French colonisation. Secondly, it seeks to establish a connection between Islamic aesthetics and French colonial architecture, shedding light on the multiple references to colonial architecture in Algeria.

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This article examines nineteenth century American abolitionist writings on India. My sources include abolitionist newspapers, primarily focusing on William Lloyd Garrison’s newspaper the Liberator, but also incorporating other abolitionist newspapers. These include the Friend of Man and publications of individual abolitionists like Lydia Maria Child’s The History of the Condition of Women, in Various Ages and Nations. By looking at their writings on Christian missionary activities in India, Indian women, and British rule in India, this article argues that although many abolitionists Orientalized India, they at the same time found many parallels between Indian society and the US. Although they did not develop a full criticism towards colonialism in the antebellum period, their criticism towards Empire matured by the early twentieth century. My scholarly intervention centres on acknowledging the hitherto unknown role of abolitionist writings on India in the intellectual history of American abolitionism and US-India transnational history. By not fully engaging with India, the scholarship on US-India relations and abolitionism misses a critical dimension of the abolitionist movement’s intimate relationship with related causes of feminism, anti-clericalism, and anti-imperialism. Most importantly, this article demonstrates that abolitionist writings on India far exceeded Orientalism as the only frame of understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines two mechanisms in treating Persian names in English-speaking contexts: name projection and name adoption. The article adopts Edward Said's Orientalism, noting Western-centric naming and colonial division with Western superiority. The treatment of the Oriental name will be discussed within the frame of linguistic Orientalism which refers to the portrayal or study of Eastern languages and cultures through the lens of Western superiority or exoticisation. Previously, this mindset projected the coloniser's preferred names onto the territory and individuals of the Other. Today, the name of the Other is governed as the subjects from different backgrounds are propelled to conform to the coloniser's preferences in choosing Anglo-sounding names. I will conclude that the shift from the authoritative name projection to the disciplinary name adoption manifests a Foucauldian trajectory from 'sovereign power' to modern 'disciplinary power' in taming the name of the Other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following critiques of secularism, feminist theory and literary analysis, this article revisits the much interpreted yet never exhausted Arabic masterpiece, the Cairo Trilogy (1956–1957), by Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006). The Cairo Trilogy depicts the lives of the middle-class ʿAbd al-Jawād family in colonial Cairo during the interwar period amidst the process of modernization and national uprising against British colonial domination. Scholars have considered the relations in the Jawādī family through a patriarchal lens via the perspective of the son Kamāl, the protagonist who represents the secular Arab intellectual. This study, instead, follows Amīna, the mother of the family, and her relationship to her two sons, Kamāl and Fahmy, to explore the different options and various relations between the religious and the secular in this colonial context. By reading the Jawādī family this way, this article uncovers the orientalist-secular construction of religion and religious ways of resistance despite colonial disruptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the nineteenth century, Orientalist scholars have been preoccupied with recovering the original order of the Qur'an. In the past fifty years, the question appears to have reached an impasse with no sign of an emerging consensus. Divergences over the anchoring in space and time of the Qur'an have contributed to the diagnosis of "crisis" in (Western) Qur'anic studies. What do the project of determining Qur'anic chronology and its failure tell us about Qur'anic studies in Western academia? What do the current impasses reveal about the nature of the Qur'an as a text and as a theological object? This study analyses disagreements over the Qur'an's space and time by drawing on tools from literary theory and hermeneutics. It argues for a shift from a positivist to an interpretative paradigm. Moving away from the question of the actual historical order of the Qur'an, this article examines the making and the workings of diachronic readings of the Muslim scripture, with a particular focus on the works of two of the most prominent scholars in the field, Angelika Neuwirth and Nicolai Sinai. The aim of the exercise is double: first, to perform a critical reflection on the networks of meaning that we construct or inherit in our engagement with the Muslim scripture; and second, to apprehend better the nature of the Qur'an as an "open text" (Eco 1962) whose textual characteristics make it particularly prone to a number of interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an analysis of the 2014 video game Dragon Age: Inquisition, this essay brings two contemporary problematics into dialogue—the neoliberal gamification of society and the logic of queer liberalism—to suggest that they converge upon a common, long-standing animus: the figure of the massified Oriental. The massified Oriental haunts Asianness, and retains East and Southwest Asia as its primary cultural referents, but the deterritorialization of Orientalism as an epistemic apparatus locates Orientalism in the realm of affect rather than geography. Thus, this paper proposes a heuristic of "actional Orientalism," which draws attention to the procedural and discursive production of agency and the consequent narrative validation of that agency, contrasting agentic players against their objectified, thingified, and massified gameworlds. Whereas in Tara Fickle's "ludo-Orientalism," wherein racialization is premised upon the otherness of the type of risk-taking and play, actional Orientalism draws on whether the racialized figure is capable of agency at all, finding within the Oriental the complete absence of the bounded, liberal, choosing subject. Dragon Age: Inquisition deploys actional Orientalism on full display, offering liberal transgender representation contingent upon acceptance of an individualist affect, requiring the full abjection of massified, Orientalized, queer others to enable this representation to survive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the representation and reception of Chinese opera, particularly in Western contexts, highlighting its unique performance modes and cultural significance. Topics discussed include the challenges of presenting Chinese opera to unfamiliar audiences, the impact of "tactical Orientalism" in its promotion, and the importance of international recognition for its cultural prestige.

The compilation of folk narratives of Chagatay coincides with the second half of the 19th century, the period following the Russian occupation of Central Asia. The content of these compilations is varied and includes many examples of folk literature, among which proverbs are the folk phrases that have attracted the most attention from Orientalists. Arminius Vámbéry was the first to record examples of proverbs from the region, and he included them in his Ćagataische Sprachstudien, published in 1867. Vámbéry's collections inspired other scholars of the time, including the Russian orientalist Nikolai Petrovich Ostroumov. The subject of this article is the Chagatay proverbs that Ostroumov collected in Turkestan in the 1880s. Ostroumov published the first part of proverbs in 1888 under the title Poslovitsı tuzemnago naseleniya Turkestanskago kraya (Proverbs of the local people of the Turkestan region) and the second part in 1891 in Tashkent under the title Poslovitsı i pogovorki tuzemnago naseleniya Turkestanskago kraya (Proverbs and idioms of the local people of the Turkestan region). These works are very important because they are among the first compilations of proverbs, and their examples were recorded in the last period of Chagatay. At the same time, the examples of proverbs are a valuable source that contributes to the study of Chagatay in the 19th century in terms of phonetic and morphological features, as well as the vocabulary and dialectology. Ostroumov brought together both the Russian translation and the Arabic text of the proverbs in his work. In this paper, which aims to introduce the compilation in Turkey, we have transcribed the text in Arabic letters, given information about some words in the text, and tried to evaluate the proverbs in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The representation of Islamic societies in life narratives by Western voyagers has long been a subject of criticism for their allegedly prejudiced and demeaning portrayal. These narratives are often accused of perpetuating Orientalist discourses and reinforcing Islamophobia. This article problematizes such myopic perspectives by demonstrating how a western-produced travelogue can move beyond hackneyed cultural clichés on the Orient and present an Eastern culture in its opulence. We examine Jürgen Wasim Frembgen's Nocturnal Music in the Land of the Sufis: The Unheard Pakistan (Frembgen, 2012), which documents the German writer's mystical journeys into the musical worlds of Pakistan. Drawing upon Bhabha's concepts of mimicry and hybridity as well as Said's theory of Orientalism, we argue that the book contests prevailing discourses on western travelogues as apparatuses to reinforce Islamophobia and Orientalism, and instead portrays the country as a dream land that is enriched with olfactory, visual, and auditory appeals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Orientalist ideologies have been strongly criticized in the last 30 years, a negative vision of the 'Islamic City' is still shared by travellers and scholars. This paper demonstrates that by using new, more sophisticated, instruments for reading cities in the Islamic Mediterranean they will not appear chaotic at all. It shows, on the contrary, fragments of a regular geometry under the appearance of an irregular plan layout. A number of case studies show that these fragments are either testimony of planned phases of the city's growth, or its previous classic fabric, systematically absorbed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]