Representing Morocco: From Mark Twain to the Beat Generation

Since the mid-nineteenth century, an increasing number of notable American writers, artists, scholars, diplomats and travelers have visited Morocco. Their texts they wrote about the country reveal diverse perceptions of the land, the people and the culture of Morocco. This course is concerned with the politics of representation with a focus on American writing on Morocco. Using a flexible historical framework, this course critically analyses a range of important theoretical works and case studies from the mid-nineteenth century to mid-twentieth century. However, the focus is going to be on the representation of the Moroccan people and places in such narratives. Discussions should evolve around questions such: how did certain political and ideological attitudes inform the construction and reproduction of Western knowledge about Morocco? Why and to what effect did Americans turn to the exotic for inspiration, and what strategies and tactics did they use to translate the foreign into terms that could be understood by their audiences at home? How does a travel narrative and other literary texts represent other people and places? In what ways does ‘fact’ overlap with ‘fiction’ in these narratives?