Orientalism, Eroticism & Modern Visuality in Global Cultures
Edited by Joan DelPlato and Julie Codell
In "Orientalism, Eroticism and Modern Visuality in Global Cultures," scholars look afresh at representations of 19th-century ’Oriental’ bodies, inquiring deeply into their erotic dimensions, tracing their global dissemination at crosscultural 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 crosscultural 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.
Bio
Julie Codell is an art history professor and affiliate in film and Asian studies at ASU. She wrote "The Victorian Artist" and edited "Transculturation in British Art;" "Power and Resistance;" "Political Economy of Art;" "Genre, Gender, Race, & World Cinema;" and "Imperial Co-Histories." She also co-edited several other works.
