This course is conceived in the context of intellectual history, with an emphasis on nineteenth and twentieth century arts and literature.  Two core texts for study and background are Edward Said’s Orientalism, and Robert Kaplan’s The Arabists.  Among the myriad potential texts and directions, this course will address the history of the Arabian Nights in English translation, T. E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and Western art and music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including Delecroix, Ingres, and Gerome among the painters, and composers like Rimsky-Korsakov and Verdi.  Carter’s archeological findings in Egypt and their impact on American imagination, both literary and cinematographic, will come into play.