Read: Said, Orientalism, pp. 1-28 (article)
Kondo, About Face, chap. 3 ("Orientalizing: Fashioning Japan") and 5 ("Fabricating Masculinity: Gender, Rance, and Nation in the Transnational Circuit"), pp. 55-99 and 157-186

1. What does Said identify as the three primary forms of Orientalism? How are they connected to each other?

2. Why, according to Said, is all knowledge about the Orient political? What are the advantages and disadvantages to this perspective?

3. How, according to Kondo, does Japanese fashion both challenge and reproduce or rework Orientalisms? What are the limitations to fashion's ability to subvert Orientalism? (Hint: think about the issues of commodification, gender, superficiality, and self-Orientalizing.)

4. What does Kondo's study of the Japanese invasion of the 1980s suggest about the role of race, nation, and the transnational in the fashion industry? How do the designers Kondo studied both resist and reproduce the identities which have been thrust upon them?

5. How are "A Notebook on Cities and Clothes" by Wim Wenders and the men's and women's editions of a Japanese fashion magazine both examples of Orientalism? What are the differences between these examples? With what significance?

6. How does the "Japanese Suit" ad campaign by Comme des Garcons illustrate the contradictions and tensions in contemporary Japanese identity, both internally in Japan and globally?

For more information, contact:  aleshkow@holycross.edu