Patricia Almarcegui
Tuesday 16 and Wednesday 17 January, 6.00 pm – 9.00 pm. Virreina LAB
Free admission. Limited number of places available
Upcoming seminar sessions: April 17 and 18

In 1978, Edward W. Said published Orientalism. The book, which shook Oriental studies and laid the foundations for and developed post-colonial studies, questioned the portrayal of the East as constructed since Antiquity. The work added to the debate on how the West had shaped European knowledge of the rest of the world, as well as on the critical rethinking of the methods used to study the East since the collapse of colonial rule. Today, events are very different. Yet the representation of the East remains virtually the same. Due to laziness or a lack of knowledge, it has barely changed at all. The purpose of this seminar is to review the mechanisms whereby this image has become fixed (how and when these mechanisms were constructed) and, above all, the way it has been configured since the most recent social and political events. Why is the East feared? Why is Islam feared?

Patricia Almarcegui is an author and a lecturer in comparative literature. Her research focuses on Orientalism and travel writing. She has been a guest lecturer at the American University in Cairo and at the Paris-Sorbonne University. In 2011, she completed a post-doctoral research stay at the Middle East Institute of Columbia University. Notable among her books are: Alí Bey y los viajeros europeos a Oriente (Bellaterra, 2007), El sentido del viaje (2013, Fray Luis de León Prize), El pintor y la viajera (Ediciones B, 2011) and La memoria del cuerpo (Fórcola, 2017). She writes for eldiario.es, La Vanguardia newspaper and the cultural supplement of ABC newspaper. In 2015, she lived in Shiraz, having received a grant for the project “The Murmur of Hafez’s Tomb”. She has published two travel books, Escuchar Irán (Newcastle, 2017) and Una viajera por Asia Central (UB, 2017).