The Image of the Other

Pre-requisites: No specific requirements

Course objectives:

Course description: The course offers insights in Western European perceptions and construction of otherness from antiquity to recent processes. The course is base of findings of historians of mediaeval and early modern Eruopean other (Norman Cohn and Jean Delumeau), on researchers of discourses of Orientalism, Balkanism and Occidentalism (Edward Said, Maria Todorova, Andrew Hammond, Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit), and on historians of racism (George L. Mosse). The course also offers insights in everyday construction of otherness through analyses of narratives in current newspapers.

Learning Outcomes:

Literature/Reading:

• Norman Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons. The Demonisation of Christian in Medieval Christendom (London: Pimclico, 2005), chapters 3, 4, 8 and 9 (on the demonization of mediaeval heretics and on witches);
• Jean Delumeau, La Peur en Occident (XIV-XVII siècles). Une cité asiégée (Paris : Fayard, 1978), capters VIII, IX, X (on agents of Satan : Muslims, Jews and Women) and conclusion. Edward Said.
• Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (New York, Oxford: 1997), pp. 3-20, 116-189 (introduction, chapters 5, 6, 7 and conclusion).
• Ian Buruma & Avishai Margalit, Occidentalism. A Short History of Anti-Westernism (London: Atlantic Books, 2005), pp. 1-47.
• Slobodan G. Markovich, British Perceptions of Serbia and the Balkans (Paris: Dialogue, 2000), pp. 182-190.
• Larry Wolf, Inventing Eastern Europe, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), pp. 284-374 (chapters 7 and 8, conclusion).
• Carl J. Fridrich and Zbigiew K. Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy