Academic Orientalism

A scholarly field of study of the Orient (the Middle East and Asia) by Western academics, as conceptualized in Edward Said’s critique in Orientalism. It refers to the academic discipline that constructed and studied “the Orient” as an object of Western knowledge, and which Said argued was entangled with imperial power and distinct from popular Orientalist art.

Claims that use this term

• Academic Orientalism neglected the modern, actual Orient until late in the nineteenth century
• Academic Orientalism and Orientalist art were separate rather than one discourse