Telling America's story to the world : literature, internationalism, cultural diplomacy /
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Oxford :
Oxford University Press,
2023.
©2023 |
| Edition: | First edition. |
| Series: | Oxford studies in American literary history.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
| Abstract: | Telling America's Story to the World argues that state and state-affiliated cultural diplomacy contributed to the making of postwar US literature. Highlighting the role of liberal internationalism in US cultural outreach, I contend that the state mainly sent authors like Ralph Ellison, Robert Lowell, William Faulkner, Langston Hughes, and Maxine Hong Kingston overseas not just to demonstrate the achievements of US civilization but also to broadcast an American commitment to global intercultural connection. Those writers-cum-ambassadors may not have helped the state achieve its propaganda goals-indeed, this rarely proved the case-but they did find their assignments an opportunity to ponder the international meanings of US literature. For many of those figures, courting foreign publics inspired a reevaluation of the scope and form of their own literary projects. Testifying to the inadvertent yet integral role of cultural diplomacy in the worlding of US letters, works like The Mansion (1959), Life Studies (1959), "Cultural Exchange" (1961, 1967), Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (1989), and <i>Three Days Before the Shooting... (2010) reimagine the literary in a mobile, global, and distinctly political register. |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (320 pages) |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780191955143 0191955140 9780192679918 0192679910 |