Though Louis Spohr’s Jessonda is primarily remembered for being an early attempt at a continuous opera, its portrayal of India presents an interesting perspective of orientalism in Biedermeier Germany. German orientalism in the early nineteenth century was not motivated by imperialism, and thus differed fundamentally from French and British orientalism. Jessonda presents a unique opportunity to study these varying motivations, due to the story’s frequent translation and adaptation to different national stages: France, Germany, England, and America. A comparison of these possible sources for the opera reveals the authors’ varying political and/or cultural motivations. Spohr’s and his librettist’s alterations to the story were motivated in part by Biedermeier values, but also by Spohr’s classicist aesthetics. Spohr believed that an opera’s story should appeal to the everyman but music should remain elevated, untainted by popular elements-- more in line with Mozart than Spontini. The women portrayed in Jessonda, however, are constructed to particularly cater to Biedermeier values: they are stripped of their agency, left with only passive loyalty to Brahma and to the male characters. Jessonda (the character) may visually represent the exotic but, in line with Spohr’s aesthetics, she acts and sings like a European. Spohr’s musical and dramatic constructions enhance the Indian-versus-European and male-versus-female binaries, and illustrate common German conceptions of both the Indian and female Other. / text

Even the title Residencia en la tierra, one of the early masterworks of Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, suggests a subject who stands alone in a world that is his by happenstance, in which he does not permanently dwell and to which he does not naturally belong. Stylistically and politically, too, among Neruda’s work Residencia seems to stand alone. Before Residencia, Neruda’s poetry was deeply personal and, compared to what came later, profoundly standard for its time and place; after the Residencia poems were completed—though before they had all been published— Neruda’s poetry would take a turn for the political that would remain with him more or less for the duration of his career. Indeed, the series presents a paradox for critics: a pivotal moment in his poetic development—what Emir Rodríguez Monegal calls Neruda’s first truly creative work—but also a work seemingly out of sync with Neruda’s later writings and vehemently rejected by the author himself only a few years after its publication. In sum, it is a work that refuses equally to be incorporated or to be ignored. This essay will attempt to carve out a more stable place for Residencia en la tierra in the critical understanding of Neruda’s poetic trajectory precisely by returning it to the place of its genesis. By retracing Neruda’s experiences in South Asia during his sojourn in Burma [Myanmar] and Ceylon [Sri Lanka] as a diplomat in the laste 1920s, the place where the enduring symbolism and ethical framework of the Residencia series were born, I will suggest new modes of reading Residencia that shed light on both why this book is so different from his others and the ways in which they are profoundly linked. / text

Den här uppsatsen analyserar svensk medias rapportering om valet i Afghanistan 2010. Med hjälp av metoder framtagna av Van Dijk har en analys av artiklar som berör valet 2010 gjorts. De teoretiska utgångspunkterna är postkolonialism och orientalism. Med hjälp av de perspektiven och Van Dijks medieanalys analyseras materialet för att tydliggöra strukturer i media.

This study is based on qualitative and hermeneutic methods. The investigation summarises how four textbooks present Buddhism in (school) subject Religion, such as texts and images. Two of them are used in Religious studies A, the rest is used in Religious studies 1. The study rests on the theories of orientalism and christocentrism, where both can be related to the concept of making secondary. In the research background there are descriptions of how the western world looks upon Buddhism in a historical perspective, but also how Buddhism in a modern age is represented. The (school) subject Religion for Religious science A was written in 2008 and the (school) subject Religion for Religious science 1 in 2006 and 2007. In an overview the analysis shows that all of the four textbooks are putting most of the focus in Buddha, the buddhist teaching, monks, nuns and temple life. The buddhist teaching is also more centrally described than the practical concept.

The Lonely Planet advises visitors to Granada, Spain to "turn off...into the cobbled alleys of Calderería Vieja or Nueva and in a few steps you've left Europe behind." La Calderería is known for its Arab influences and North African immigrant businesses. A tourist's ability to easily step off one continent and enter another realm demonstrates an imagined border between Europe and the Orient, especially North Africa, that is created by historical narratives, policy discourses and daily practices. The antagonism between an imagined white, Catholic and European Spain vis-à-vis its North African Muslim neighbors is fundamental to the history of the Spanish nation. This East/West divide has recently been recast as Moroccan immigration, inspired by proximity and colonial legacies, since the 1980s has made Moroccan the largest immigrant group by nationality in Spain. Supranational borders, neighborhoods and specific streets participate in an intense debate about cultural difference, based on a complicated mixture of racial, ethnic and religious categories. Concurrently, more regional autonomy within the Spanish state has led Andalusia to reclaim its Islamic heritage, especially in Granada where tourism is important economically. This has dovetailed with gentrification of the Albayzín. Both the appropriation of the Islamic period of Iberian history and the contemporary social exclusion of Moroccan immigrants are realized through Orientalism. In La Calderería, tea, souvenirs, male Moroccan vendors, Western female tourists, pavement, cultural conservation, public space ordinances and police surveillance create a site where public and private space blurs and ‘practical orientalism’ constitutes subjects performing and resisting the identities prescribed to them.

Published in 1851, Moby-Dick is audaciously experimental and defiantly unique for its time. Many scholars attribute problematic aspects of the book to this authorial ambition, and for the Melville critic, the figure of Fedallah is one of those problems. This study aims to explore how the Oriental character, Fedallah, operates within the larger world of reading and interpretation in Moby-Dick. Major critics of the past have struggled to reconcile the Parsee’s shadowy essence with the materiality of the whale ship, and have interpreted this figure as an evil force, or often bluntly, a devil. However, like many other subjects in the book, Fedallah evades definition. This thesis explores the idea that Fedallah is not an inconsequential bystander to the action, but a character of significant depth and feeling, and an active participant in the interpolated questing and prophetic narratives that lie at the heart of Moby-Dick.

The science of human origins, known formally as ‘paleoanthropology’, was effectively born in the fierce late nineteenth century debate as to the human status of Neanderthal. Critical social theory on ‘scientism’ has generated a wealth of research on the ways the various human sciences contribute to the structuring and organizing of social relations. This includes Foucault’s well-known genealogical studies of clinical medicine, which have provided sociologists with crucial insight into how classifying and ordering practices actually create ‘Man’ in the way they operate as a field – or “technology” – of power (Foucault 1970). However, as yet there has been very little produced by sociologists interested in the impacts of science on society with regards to paleoanthropology specifically. This is especially surprising considering that Neanderthal, the quintessential ‘missing link’ and the hub of paleoanthropology’s speculative and explanatory universe, clearly occupies a central place in the socio-historical emergence of ‘humanness’ as an ontological category. Moving forward from the basic observation that the original 1856 discovery of fossilized Neanderthal remains in a cave in Germany’s Neander Valley generally coincided with the end of the colonial period, my dissertation seeks to fill a void in sociology via a genealogical study of paleoanthropological science. Drawing largely upon the insight of Foucault but also that of Saïd, I undertake a discourse analysis of the early debates surrounding Neanderthal with an aim toward shedding light upon the ways in which Neanderthal propagated or concealed certain anxieties, particularly as they relate to biological kinships. This is then applied to an exploration of how the debates surrounding Neanderthal were in turn pivotal to the emergence of today’s prevailing paleoanthropological models of human origins. The profound ontological and epistemological tensions embodied by these models, I argue, wholly reflect the inherently ambiguous nature of the missing link as both concept and metaphor. The result is that missing links, because of the discursive field in which they function, are a powerful source of normativity and stratification. / Thesis (Ph.D, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2014-02-04 12:53:52.631

This thesis is about the life and work of Gertrude Bell, a British woman born in the late nineteenth century, whose extensive knowledge of Middle East cultures and people won her a job as the Oriental Secretary in Iraq after World War One. Modern historians, including Toby Dodge and Edward Said, consider Bell to be an irredeemable orientalist, one whose work is only ethnocentric and essentialist. Using the work of Billie Melman and Mohja Kahf, my aim is to contextualize Bell's work, and to see if, given the various circumstances in which she worked, a more sympathetic reading is not possible, and if perhaps Said and Dodge are not sometimes guilty of essentialism. I will also examine Said's theories in Orientalism, and though this thesis is in no way an attempt to discredit Said's work, I wish to pose a question; if one can take a small piece of the Orientalist puzzle (Bell's work) and shows that it differs from Said's description, does this undermine the idea of orientalism as a cohesive body of ideas?

Textbooks are a very influential medium considering the fact that they often introduce students to information they have never read or heard about before, and as such they become very important in forming students’ opinions on different matters. In this study I have taken a closer look at five textbooks in history that are currently being used in the Swedish upper secondary school. My aim has been to find out how East Asia is pictured and also how much space East Asian history is given in these textbooks with the postcolonial theory as theoretical basis. My study shows that East Asia is given very little space compared to Europe in these books, with an average of less than a twentieth of the number of pages that deal with European history. However, compared to other non-European and non-western parts of the world East Asia is given relatively much space. Concerning the picture of East Asia I have found two different discourses that are dominating the scene. One discourse is characterized by a postcolonial and stereotypical perspective on East Asia, where the countries are described as passive and inferior to the Western world. The other discourse, however, shows a more nuanced perspective on East Asia. I have also found a number of problematic factual inaccuracies in the chapters on East Asia in these books. Conclusively my study shows the importance of a critical perspective on textbooks when using them in education. Keywords: Östasien, Kina, Japan, historiedidaktik, historieläroböcker, omvärldsbilder, postkolonial teori, orientalism, diskursanalys.

I dagens informationsflöden, får nationella gränser allt mindre betydelse. Den globala människan får information från hela världen genom att exempelvis öppna morgontidningen, slå på Tv:n eller gå in på nätet. Utrikeskorrespondenter spelar en viktig roll i människors informationsintag. De kan ses som nyckelspelare i dagens globala nyfikenhet och som ett fönster ut mot världen.   I denna uppsats undersöks hur Sveriges televisions utrikesmagasin Korrespondenterna berättar om världen. Public service medier inklusive programmet Korrespondenterna står för så kallad god journalistik. Deras inflytande kan därför antas vara stort och bidragande till hur vi som tittare uppfattar världen. Genom en narrativ analys av tre programavsnitt och Korrespondenternas introvinjett synliggörs både formalistiska, dramaturgiska och sociala mönster i  Korrespondenternas berättande.   Uppsatsens analys visar på att Korrespondenterna använder sig av olika nivåer av berättande.  Korrespondenterna vill gärna passa in berättelsen inom programmets fasta ram, där orientalism går att se som en del av berättelsen. När intervjupersoner berättar om en relativt ”vanlig” tillvaro, berättar Korrespondenternas programledare om en mer dramatisk och främmande.  Korrespondenterna kan dels ses som kosmopoliter, med en vilja att se världen som en gemensam plats. Men främst som orientalister som berättar om världen med hjälp av bland annat exotisk musik och dramatiska vinklar. Korrespondenterna korsar visserligen landsgränser, men kulturella och sociala gränser behålls. Det faktum att utrikeskorrespondenter berättar om världen ”där ute” för oss ”här hemma” gör att det finns en tydlig skillnad mellan dem man berättar om och dem man berättar för.