Read: Said, Orientalism, pp. 1-28
Kondo, About Face, Chapter 3 ("Orientalizing: Fashioning Japan"), pp. 55-99 (Moodle article)
Leshkowich and Jones, "What Happens When Asian Chic Becomes Chic in Asia?" (Moodle article)
Tu, The Beautiful Generation, chapters 1, 2, 3, 5

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 that 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. What do Jones and Leshkowich mean by performance practices? How does it allow us to make sense of Asian Chic dress choices in Asia? What, in your opinion, are the advantages and disadvantages to this approach?

7. What dynamics, according to Tu, have shaped the cultural economy of Asian Chic? How do Asian American designers relate to this cultural economy? What meanings does "Asia" have for them?

8. What role do constructions of kinship relationships play in the careers of Asian American designers? How are these intimate relationships hierarchical? How are they connected to broader racialized patterns of labor in the US?

For more information, contact:  aleshkow@holycross.edu