Orientalism - autonomous learning

Acknowledgments
I have been reading about Orientalism for a number of years,
but most of this book was written during 1975-1976, which I spent
as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral
Sciences, Stanford, California. In this unique and generous institution,
it was my good fortune not only to have benefitted agreeably
from several colleagues, but also from the help of Joan Warmbrunn,
Chris Hoth, Jane Kielsmeier, Preston Cutler, and the center's
director, Gardner Lindzey. The list of friends, colleagues, and
students who read, or listened to, parts or the whole of this manuscript
is so long as to embarrass me, and now that it has finally
appeared as a book, perhaps even them. Nevertheless I should
mention with gratitude the always helpful encouragement of Janet
and Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Noam Chomsky, and Roger Owen, who
followed this project from its beginning to its conclusion. Likewise
I must gratefully acknowledge the helpful and critical interest of
the colleagues, friends, and students in various places whose
questions and discussion sharpened the text considerably. Andre
Schiffrin and Jeanne Morton of Pantheon Books were ideal publisher
and copy editor, respectively, and made the ordeal (for the
author, at least) of preparing the manuscript an instructive and
genuinely intelligent process. Mariam Said helped me a great deal
with her research on the early modern history of Orientalist institutions.
Apart from that, though, her loving support really made
much of the work on this book not only enjoyable but possible.
New York
September-October 1977
E. W.S.
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