SAID, EDWARD

born Nov. 1, 1935, Jerusalem in full Edward William Said Palestinian-American literary critic who studied literature in light of social and cultural politics and was an outspoken proponent of Arab issues, in particular the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Said was educated in Western schools in Jerusalem and Cairo before moving to the United States to attend Princeton University (B.A., 1957) and Harvard University (M.A., 1960; Ph.D., 1964). He joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1963. His first book, Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography (1966), was an expansion of his doctoral thesis. The book examines Conrad's short stories and letters for the underlying tension of the author's narrative style; it is concerned with the cultural dynamics of beginning a work of literature or scholarship. In Orientalism (1978), perhaps his best-known work, Said examines Western stereotypes about the Orient, specifically the Islamic world, and argues that Orientalist scholarship is based on Western imperialism. His books about the Middle East include The Question of Palestine (1979), Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (1981), Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question (1988; coedited with Christopher Hitchens), The Politics of Dispossession (1994), and Peace and Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process (1995). Among his other notable books are The World, the Text, and the Critic (1983), Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature: Yeats and Decolonization (1988), Musical Elaborations (1991), and Culture and Imperialism (1993).