This course reflects on Edward W. Said's seminal Study Orientalism. The first part focuses on the debates around academic representations of the Orient before and after Said's intervention: his critics, alternative perspectives and methodological elaborations. The second part dissects the ways in which Orientalism inhabits political forms of belonging such as romantic nationalism or Islamic fundamentalism, as well as colonial constructions of liberalism, race, gender and sexuality. The third part examines the ramifications of Orientalist knowledge production in the media and in visual culture. The course also raises questions of strategic reversals of Orientalism, and to what extent Occidentalism can be considered the non-Western equivalent to Western constructions of Otherness.