born Nov. 1, 1935, Jerusalem
died Sept. 25, 2003, New York, N.Y., U.S.
Palestinian-born U.S. literary critic.
Said was educated in Western schools in Jerusalem and Cairo before moving to the United States to attend Princeton and Harvard universities. He taught at Columbia University beginning in 1963. In Orientalism (1978), his best-known work, he examines Western stereotypes of the Islamic world and argues that Orientalist scholarship is based on Western imperialism. An outspoken proponent of Palestinian issues, he wrote on the Middle East in such works as The Question of Palestine (1979) and The Politics of Dispossession (1994). His more general concern was the complex interaction of literature and politics, which he treated in Beginnings (1975), The World, the Text, and the Critic (1983), and Culture and Imperialism (1993). Out of Place (1999) is a memoir.