Although the intellectual history of the globe’s great hemispheric divide into “East” and “West” is largely a product of the twentieth century, the western sense of a world that separated its own civilized men from the rest dates back at least to the middle years of the eighteenth century. The 2006-2008 RCHA project “The Question of the West” will explore the historical origins and contemporary consequences of this divided world and investigate the mix of material life and moral values that goes by the name of “Western Civilization.”

The two-year project will explore the epistemological status of “the West” from a variety of intellectual and geographic perspectives. From some of those perspectives, “the West” may not exist at all as a meaningful referent, or it may exist merely as a popular fantasy or an ideological construction. Under the withering fire of comparative and postcolonial historians, the idea of “the West” has lost much of its scholarly legitimacy. Yet, however evanescent “the West” may be as a geographical location, however spurious its claims to constitute “civilization” or to be the source of “universal” values, as an idea its consequences have been profound and lasting. Imperial fictions demand sustained critical attention, especially when their impact is more than merely fictional.

The haste with which the divide between the East and West was trotted out in the aftermath of September 11th reminds us that these ideas have a popular appeal with deep historical roots. Indeed one could argue that a tense duality between East and West has hovered beneath the surface of global cultural history for centuries, and that the tension has often erupted into overt conflict. It is easy to caricature the sides of the divide and to simplify the tensions gnawing at the world’s uneven moves into modernity. “The West” and “the East”, moreover, have both exerted magnetic fascination to the other; the simple geographic references, from time to time, have become gestures of utopian promise.

We invite scholars from a number of disciplines and scholars working outside the Western academy to join a wide-ranging discussion of history, economics, politics, geography, literature, and culture. In 2007-2008, the seminar will continue to address both historical issues and contemporary debates, exploring the significance of an East-West divide in modern thought, ideological uses of universalist claims, relationships between narratives of civilization and imperial policies, non-Western alternatives to Western metaphorical mapping, and related topics. Throughout, we expect to entertain challenges to the history of the East-West divide, take up the still puzzling mix of hope, promise and mechanistic excess tangled inside the heart of the West, and offer insights into the nature of the stakes of a divided world.

As in the past, both senior and postdoctoral fellows from outside Rutgers will be recruited as well as faculty and graduate students from within. They will be the core participants in the weekly seminars around which intellectual and collegial exchanges will be oriented. The deadline for applications is December 15, 2006 for all fellowships.