WGS 499 E - The Myths of the “Oriental” Woman

During the era of Western imperialism, Europeans viewed Asia, Africa, and the Middle-East in a variety of ways: dark, erotic, exotic, savage, and uncivilized. The people of these supposedly untamed lands were observed, explored, and exploited by Western imperialists. Rarely were these people given a voice of their own, and rarely were they viewed as autonomous humans on par with the “civilized” Western world. For women in these countries, their oppression was twofold. They were often second-class citizens in the patriarchal societies in which they lived, and they were also exoticized and orientalized by Western white men traveling in these lands. Such stereotypes of these women have included: the scary but seductive dragon ladies of China, the demure geisha of Japan, and the sexy belly dancers and mysteriously veiled women from the Arab world. The goal of this course is to explore these stereotypes. Why have they been created? Why do they still persist? What are women from the “Orient” truly like? And why is it dangerous to allow such stereotypes to exist? To do so, I will ask you to think about these questions as we explore literature written about and by women from Asian and Arab countries. Also listed as CMLT 499 A . (Group III) (Diversity, Writing Option)