Writing Off the Beaten Track: Reflections on the Meaning of Travel and Culture in the Middle East

by Judith Caesar

Overview

Written by an American woman who resides and teaches in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, these informal sketches of life in the Gulf capture the flavor of that exotic corner of the Arab world. Even as she acquaints us with intriguing aspects of Emirati culture, the author notes the varied difficulties inherent in perceiving another way of life, especially one that has been ignored and frequently misrepresented in the West. She provides a unique view of the diverse ways in which American pop culture affects Middle Eastern thought and custom, from shopping and song to fashion and fads. Keenly observed and graced with wit and authority, these essays offer a palpable picture of a place little known to the West while raising substantial questions about the essence of culture and the stereotyping of people and places. Off the Beaten Track will be vastly useful to teachers of Middle East studies and those who have contact with non-Western students. Readers interested in the region and travel aficionados will find it an enlightening and highly original read.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815629573
Publisher:	Syracuse University Press
Publication date:	11/01/2002
Series:	Contemporary Issues in the Middle East
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.83(d)

About the Author

Judith Caesar is associate professor of English and chair of the English Department at American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. She is the author of Crossing Borders: An American Woman in the Middle East, also published by Syracuse University Press.

Editorial Reviews

Caesar (Crossing Borders: An American Woman in the Middle East) is a well-intentioned but disappointing narrator who fails in an attempt to extrapolate from her experiences teaching English at a university in the United Arab Emirates to a larger commentary on the Middle East. Despite 10 years in the region, she comes across as wide-eyed. Rather than the "muddle east," a term used by her expatriate friends in Saudi Arabia (where Caesar has lived), in the Emirates she finds "a kind of melded east": she marvels at women with abayahs (veils) and cell phones, and finds it surprising that she is able to sit "in a French-named coffee shop in an American-style shopping mall in Dubai drinking Italian espresso." She is disappointed to find middle America in the Middle East, but she is content to repeat predictable stories with little analysis or context, based on conversations with expatriate teachers or their spouses and with a handful of her restive students. Caesar does not claim to be an expert, and some of her thoughts on travel in general are perceptive, though a little wooden-"I liked living in other cultures because it made me question what I thought I knew." Her more observant anecdotes are about what it is to be an American abroad and how travel has made her more aware of issues in America-like poverty, misogyny and hate crimes-that she had previously been blind to. (Dec.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly