International Perspectives on Gender Week 8: Feminism, Orientalism and Nationalism

Edward Said Orientalism Published 1978

The Snake Charmer Jean Léone Gérôme c1870

The Snake Charmer focuses on a naked boy handling a python while an old man plays a fipple flute. Watching intently is a group of mercenaries differentiated by the distinctive costumes of their tribes, by ornaments, and by weapons. Such erotic and exotic imagery of Near Eastern subjects was very popular in the late nineteenth century. Despite the nearly photographic realism employed by Gérome, the painting is a pastiche of Egyptian, Turkish, and Indian elements that have no basis in reality. Source: The Clark InstituteThe Clark Institute

John Frederick Lewis An Intercepted Correspondence, 1869

Pool in a Harem Jean Léone Gérôme 1876

Offensive and inaccurate portrayal of India Depicts the Goddess Kali, Hindu Goddess of Energy, as evil, from the underworld. Depicts Indians as eating ‘baby snakes, eyeball soup, beetles and monkey brains’.

From the dark, over- crowded, twisting, dangerous alleys of Jerusalem to the white cliffs of Dover and the safety of the bright, empty expanses of England

James Mill (father of John Stuart Mill) 1773 – 1836

Mother India: Selections from the Controversial 1927 Text, Edited and with an Introduction by Mrinalini Sinha by Katherine Mayo

Eleanor Rathbone Author of Child Marriage: The Indian Minotaur Published 1934

Mary Daly Published 1978

Source: Reflections on Health in Society and Culture, University of Virginia

Nation and Narration 1990 Homi Bhabha Born 1949

Statues of Britannia Liverpool Town Hall Plymouth Hoe

Strident: A model posing as Britannia with sackloads of protest slips destined for Downing Street [Daily Mail campaign to Get Britannia back on the 50 pence coin]

Marianne, Symbol of The French Republic Statues of Mother Russia

Rosie the Riveter Poster, created by J. Howard Miller for US War Production Co-ordination Committee (WW2) Elizabeth L. Gardner, Women’s Airforce Service Pilot (WW2)