ORIENTALISTS ABOUT ORIENTAL STUDIES: (1) Introduction to Oriental Studies. General course. E. I. Zelenev, V. B. Kasevich, St. Petersburg: KARO Publ., 2011; (2) Concepts of modern Oriental studies. E. I. Zelenev, V. B. Kasevich, St. Petersburg: KARO Publ., 2013 Two books, prepared mainly by the staff of the Faculty of Oriental Studies of Saint Petersburg University1, are materials for courses taught at this faculty. The responsible editors and true inspirers of both books are E. I. Zelenev and V. B. Kasevich. The books do not bear the label "Study guide", but the annotations say that they are intended mainly for students: one for bachelor's degree, the other for master's degree. The first of them is equipped with the work program of the discipline "Introduction to Oriental Studies", intended for first-year students of the Faculty of Oriental Studies and designed for 18 classroom sessions, i.e." back-to-back " for the first semester. Of course, the staff of the Faculty of Oriental Studies has the right to decide on the scope of this course and its place in the educational process. But this book shows that the course is extremely rich and has a high level of complexity. Looking ahead, I would say that for students of other humanities majors, such courses analyzing the meaning of the relevant science would be extremely useful. The second book, judging by the abstract, is also a "course of lectures", but it remains unclear whether this means teaching all undergraduates, regardless of specialization, or selectively. Some of the materials in this book will be difficult for non-specialists. The books, according to the editors, "conceptually continue" one another. Therefore, they should be considered separately and together. For the sake of brevity, we will call one " Introduction "(1), and the other "Concepts" (2). The main impression of these books is that Orientalists have finally begun to think about their science and realized that students should be introduced to a broa ... Читать далее