World Lit Messageboard>

Homework: Introduction to Edward Said

The Bolt Guest Mar 30, 2003 4:08 PM	These links will provide insight into the influence Edward Said has had on the discussion of World Literatures. Read each and take notes to aid your discussion in class. 1) “About Said’s Orientalism”: http://www.colorado.edu/English/engl2010mk/2said.html (Read before East/West Stories.) 2) More on Orientalism: http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/Orientalism.html 3) “Culture and Imperialism”: http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/barsaid.htm 1993. Last Edited Guest on 21-Jul-2003 9:22 PM
JB 500 posts Sep 25, 2003 10:11 PM	US-Based Palestinian Advocate Edward Said Dies Jenny Badner New York 25 Sep 2003, 22:57 UTC Listen to Jenny Badner's report from New York (RealAudio) Badner report - Download 320k (RealAudio) Edward Said (Photo courtesy - Emory University) Edward Said, a leading advocate for the Palestinian cause in the United States and a highly respected literary critic, has died. The Columbia University professor was best known to the public for his role as an advocate for the Palestinians. He wrote and spoke passionately about the plight of the Palestinian people, and helped bring the fight for Palestinian statehood to the public eye. But Edward Said was a controversial figure. He criticized Israeli treatment of the Palestinians, U.S. policy towards Israel and the peace process in the Middle East. In recent years, he was also critical of the Palestinian Authority and the leadership of Yasser Arafat. A spokesman for the American-Arab Anti-discrimination Committee, Hussein Ibish, says the loss of Edward Said is a blow for Arabs and Arab-Americans. Mr. Ibish, who is a personal friend of the Said family, says his death is also a loss to the human family because Edward Said was a humanist who fought for universal values. “I think that everyone listening should know that, whether they have ever met Edward Said or not, they have lost a friend because Edward Said was a great humanist and a champion of co-existence and tolerance and mutual respect among peoples and among societies,” he said. “I think that is something that is very rare and it is something that is more needed than ever.” Edward Said was born in British-ruled Jerusalem in 1935. He came from a prominent Christian family, which moved to Cairo when Israel was created in 1948. He was an American citizen and was educated at top U.S. universities. He wrote more than a dozen books on topics ranging from politics to literature, music and Freud. His 1978 work Orientalism focused on the way the West historically "came to terms" with the so-called "Muslim Orient.” The book helped launch a new academic field of post-colonial studies. Mr. Ibish says that in his writing and lectures, Edward Said worked vigorously to foster understanding between Arab and American societies. “Said, although he was completely fluent in both Western and Arab cultures, often said he never felt fully at home in either of them,” he said. “And so, from this de-centered perspective, he tried, I think, as much as he could, to provide a bridge between increasingly alienated Arab and American societies to explain the one to the other.” Mr. Said died Thursday in a New York hospital after ten years of battling leukemia. He was 67 years old and leaves behind a wife, a son and a daughter.
JB 501 posts Sep 25, 2003 10:14 PM	World-renowned scholar Edward Said dies George Wright and agencies Thursday September 25, 2003 Edward Said, the world-renowned scholar, writer and critic has died aged 67, it was announced today. Said died at a New York hospital, his editor Shelly Wanger said. He had suffered from leukaemia since the early 1990s. He was born in 1935 in Jerusalem - then part of British-ruled Palestine - and raised in Egypt before moving to the United States as a student. He was for many years the leading US advocate for the Palestinian cause. His writings have been translated into 26 languages and his most influential book, Orientalism (1978), was credited with forcing Westerners to re-examine their perceptions of the Islamic world. His works cover a plethora of other subjects, from English literature, his academic speciality, to music and culture. His later books include "Musical Elaborations" in 1991, and "Cultural Imperialism" in 1993. Many of his books - including The Question of Palestine (1979), Covering Islam (1981), After the Last Sky (1986) and Blaming the Victims (1988) - were influenced directly by his involvement with Palestine. He was a prominent member of the Palestinian parliament-in-exile for 14 years before stepping down 1991. Said, a professor at Columbia University for most of his academic career, was consistently critical of Israel for what he regarded as mistreatment of the Palestinians. He prompted a controversy in 2000 when he threw a rock toward an Israeli guardhouse on the Lebanese border. Columbia did not censure him, saying the stone was not directed at anyone, no law was broken and that his actions were protected by principles of academic freedom. He wrote two years ago after visits to Jerusalem and the West Bank that Israel's "efforts toward exclusivity and xenophobia toward the Arabs" had strengthened Palestinian determination. "Palestine and Palestinians remain, despite Israel's concerted efforts from the beginning either to get rid of them or to circumscribe them so much as to make them ineffective," Said wrote in the English-language Al-Ahram Weekly, published in Cairo. His outspoken stance made him many enemies; he suffered repeated death threats and in 1985 he was called a Nazi by the Jewish Defence League and his university office was set on fire. After the signing of the Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), Said also criticised Yasser Arafat because he believed the PLO leader had made a bad deal for the Palestinians. In a 1995 lecture, he said Arafat and the Palestinian Authority "have become willing collaborators with the (Israeli) military occupation, a sort of Vichy government for Palestinians." Salman Rushdie once said of Said that he "reads the world as closely as he reads books". The Irish critic Seamus Deane described him as: "That rare figure: a truly public intellectual who has a powerful influence within the academy and also a potent public presence. He's a very brilliant reader, of both texts and political situations." Hamid Dabashi, chairman of Columbia's Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures Department, said: "Over the past three decades he was the most eloquent spokesman for the plight of the Palestinians." Said is survived by Miriam, his second wife.