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Lecture on American Studies

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Topic: Representation of the Other in Desert de Re

花园里的异域风情：启蒙运动时期的他者表征

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Speaker: Prof. Jia Ning

Discussant: Prof. Zhang Chunbo

Chair: Prof. Fu Meirong

Venue: Room 115, SEIS Building

Time: 2:00 – 4:00 pm, May 23 (Wednesday)

Language: English

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About the lecture

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Standing at the fountainhead of the modern era, the Enlightenment was a critical period when the concept of other was defined, analyzed and debated in modern terminology. This seminar will focus on the Enlightenment concept of other by interpreting a French picturesque garden which is a typical manifestation of the social and cultural spirits of French Enlightenment. Through close architectural and hermeneutic reading of the garden, discussion on French art and aesthetic taste of the time and examination of major works by representative philosophers, the seminar explores the differentiated representation of the historical other and the geographical other in Enlightenment France, and argues that contrary to the fluid and dynamic image created for past stages in Western history, the image constructed for the Orient is completely divorced from its own context and history to become essentialist and static. The historical other is in fact safely incorporated into the Enlightenment vision of a progressive development; only the Orient was the real other.

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