Toward a Study of Muslim “Blackface:” Examples of Everyday Orientalism in the Western European Tradition

Lecture by Dr. Ariel Salzmann

This lecture and power-point presentation will explore the use of denigrating Muslim stereotypes in quotidian Western European culture (vernacular decoration, costume, popular theatre, carnival masks, newspaper accounts, etc.) in the early modern period (1500-1800) and their legacy on modern images, including the infamous Danish “cartoons.”

Date: Saturday January 16, 2010
Time: 3:00 p.m.
Location: Auditorium, Noor Cultural Centre
Admission: $5

Ariel Salzmann studies the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean past, with a particular interest in comparative early modern history. She is currently Associate Professor of Islamic and World History at Queen’s University. She has published articles and chapters, including “The Age of Tulips: Confluence and Conflict in Early Modern Consumer Culture (1500-1730)” in Consumption in the Ottoman Empire, ed. Donald Quataert (2000), on the subject of political economy, consumption and governance. Her book Tocqueville in the Ottoman Empire: Rival Paths to the Modern State, (forthcoming) explores the Ottoman old regime from a comparative perspective.

Painting: “Black Sultana” by Joseph Marie Vien (1748)