Edward Said’s magnum opus, Orientalism (1978), proved to be a watershed moment in the critical study of Orientalism across the world. Orientalism (1978) not only accelerated a distinct scholarship but also contributed to solidify the realms of Postcolonial studies as well. Along the time, the Saidian attack on the Western power/knowledge, modernity/coloniality continuum left a lasting effect on Orientalist scholarship. Even though Said's focus has been the British and French Orientalism, the USA has had its own peculiar kind of borrowed and own varieties of Orientalism/s. Latin America on the other hand, particularly through the geographic and epistemic entanglement of the New World, the Indies, or Las Indias has its own specific peculiarity in terms of the East. In addition, there has been a continuous flow of goods, people and cultural artifacts on the Europe-America-Asia route, putting America (South and North) epistemically right in the middle of the conundrum. In fact, America or the USA wrests the last vestige of the Spanish colony, Cuba, Puerto Rico as well as the Philippines in 1898, and once again reinforced the trans-Pacific Manila Galeon continuum that existed for 250 years between 1565 to 1815, joining Manila-Acapulco-Sevilla on one cultural and trade highway. 

In this seminar, we would like to explore how the Americas have dealt with the Orient in their literature, visual art and cinema. What has been the role of the Orient in their nation buildings, national identity formation, cultural formations, and how they have expressed this encounter across time and space? Have the Americas formed a distinct kind of Orientalism or Orientalisms in plural? Using visual culture, art history, literary criticism and similar methodologies this seminar will explore the American Orientalism exhaustively.