Ezra Pound discovered his famous dictum “Make It New” while reading Chinese history. A fascination with the Orient was a modernist fad, but one accompanied by a serious attempt to renew modern art via the Far East. This course will investigate this particular modernist trend in the work of a range of American poets including Pound, Stein, and Williams, as well as lesser-known modernists Sadakichi Hartmann and Yone Noguchi. In addition, we will read critical and philosophical accounts of Orientalism with a special emphasis on the structure of American Orientalism.