Sapphism and the Seraglio: Reflections on the Queer Female Gaze and Orientalism

In Orientalism, Eroticism and Modern Visuality in Global Cultures scholars look afresh at representations of nineteenth-century ’oriental’ bodies, inquiring deeply into their erotic dimensions, tracing their global dissemination at cross-cultural intersections of the visual and the political. Authors consider the impact of eroticized orientalist representations registered on racial and gendered bodies at historical moments across the globe in the media of photography, painting, prints and sculpture by contextualizing the visual within social practices, ethnography, literature, travel writing and the dynamics of imperialism. Authors examine orientalism’s politico-erotic import across not only imperial Britain and France but also throughout India and the Middle East initiating cross-cultural analyses of orientalism outside of Europe. Works studied include Orientalist and homoerotic works by canonic artists such as Ingres, Gérôme, Delacroix and Girodet, and lesser-known artists such as sculptor Raffaele Monti and painter Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann. Contributors explore Turkish and European writings, explorer Richard Burton’s self-fashioning, and popular Orientalist photography in India and the Middle East. Authors draw on methods from gender studies, semiotics, material culture and psychoanalysis to explore art, national identity, homoerotic subcultures, female agency, class, sexuality and colonialism.