14207 Issues in Intercultural Exchange and Cross-Cultural Encounters 1

Credits: 3 graduate credits in Cultural Studies

Prerequisites: Two of the following courses: Society, Culture and Representation; Theories and Approaches in Cultural Studies; Anthropological and Sociological Approaches to Cultural Studies; Multiculturalism in Israel

The course is based on a reader edited by Omri Herzog.

The starting point for this course is the question of the extent to which members of one culture have access to the meanings of another culture, and how susceptible this access is to influence, appropriation and bias. The course deals with the theoretical aspects of intercultural contact points and with an analysis of common contact practices between cultures. This involves issues of negotiation between ‘first’ world and ‘third’ world cultures, emphasizing strategies for representing the cultural ‘other’. The course focuses on the economics of exotic relations, through which the objects, stories and rituals of an alien, usually peripheral, culture are imported; as well as the ‘global village’ economy, through which objects from the cultural center are disseminated to peripheral cultures.

Topics: Inter-textuality and the economics of translation; How can we talk about a different culture?; The cultural center and peripheral cultures; Orientalism and critiques of Orientalism; What is the exotic?; Narratives of tourism; Admiring the beauty of the other.

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1Students may write a seminar paper in this course, although it is not required.