"The overall aim of this project is a comparative study of German and English Orientalist discourses – Western modes and categories of thinking about the Orient – between 1500 and 1650. The central issue addressed here is whether the German and English experiences of the Orient in this period, more specifically encounters with the Ottoman Empire, differed and, in turn, produced other kinds of Orientalism. This is an important project for a number of reasons: firstly, it will examine the viability of the prevalent concept of Orientalism as it was first formulated by Edward Said; secondly, the project addresses a gap in the existing research by providing not only the first Anglo-German comparative study on the subject, but will also synthesise the different scholarly approaches to the field towards a poetics of Orientalism. The questions Orientalism addresses are, among other things, concerned with Europe’s understanding of Islamic cultures; thus, a third important reason for this study is that it will trace and analyse some of the earliest debates and experiences of these encounters. Such a historical narrative is crucial if we are to understand Europe’s relationships with its Islamic neighbours today. While my own research expertise is on early modern English Orientalism, this project depends substantially on further archival research in Germany, Austria and England. An interdisciplinary undertaking combining literary and historical approaches, the results of this project represent an innovative reappraisal of an established problem, by bringing to consciousness some of the finer, neglected strategies that inform geographically specific Orientalisms."