The East in Western Media: A Critical Introduction is a comprehensive guide to understanding how 'the East' has been represented across Western media, exploring the cultural, ethical, and political implications of cross-cultural representation.

This student-friendly textbook introduces core concepts including orientalism, postcolonialism, and media representation through eleven thematically organized chapters. Each chapter is divided into manageable sections and includes questions for reflection, discussion prompts, and recommended further reading. The flexible structure allows the book to serve as the foundation for an entire course or enables instructors to assign specific chapters and sections tailored to their curriculum. Readers gain a clear understanding of complex cross-cultural issues through structured guidance that demystifies the often-confusing landscape of representation studies, equipping them with critical tools to analyse media portrayals of the East and their broader consequences.

This book is designed for university-level students and instructors in film, media, and cultural studies programmes. It is ideal for courses focusing on cross-cultural representation, orientalism, postcolonial studies, and media analysis, as well as students seeking either a comprehensive overview of the field or focused exploration of specific topics within representation studies.

Paul Bowman is Professor of Cultural Studies at Cardiff University. He is the author of over a dozen books on themes as diverse as political and cultural theory, popular culture, postcolonialism, and many aspects of martial arts in media and culture. His most recent books include The Invention of Martial Arts: Popular Culture between Asia and America (2021) and The Sublime Object of Orientalism: Asian Physical Culture in the West (2026).