Book diplomacy in the cultural Cold War: interdisciplinary perspectives

Abstract

"Broadly speaking, book diplomacy covers the use of books to achieve certain objectives related to the foreign policy interests of a given country, usually involving state-private partnerships of varying degrees. In this volume, scholars from different disciplines examine in detail how books functioned as tools of "soft power" and cultural diplomacy during the cultural Cold War. This study also introduces a 10-point typology to examine the many forms and practices of Cold War book diplomacy and the diversity of objectives and outcomes that they involved. Looking beyond the Cold War, this volume stresses the continuing importance of books as a distinct form of material culture used to convey information around the world"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents

Book diplomacy in the cultural Cold War and beyond : an introduction / Esmaeil Haddadian-Moghaddam and Giles Scott-Smith -- Internationalism meets the Cold War : interwar book networks as challenge to state power / Steven W. Witt -- Professor Pearson goes to Washington : Norman Holmes Pearson, U.S. literature, and the senior seminar in foreign policy / Deborah Cohn -- Literature as a weapon? : Soviet book diplomacy and U.S. literature in the cultural Cold War between 1945 and 1964 / Alexander Erokhin -- Bringing books to France : literary agents in Cold War : transnational networks (1940s-1960s) / Cécile Cottenet -- The literary agent as book diplomat : Erich Linder's agency in the transnational socialization of Tamizdat / Ilaria Sicari -- Serving two masters : Cold War book diplomacy in 1960s Greece / Christos Mais -- Translation as a tool of soft power : a study of Franklin Book Programs' Urdu books in Pakistan / Hafiz Abid Masood and Tahoor Ali -- Translating for children during the Cold War : The adventures of Tom Sawyer in Franco's Spain and Chairman Mao's China / Julia Lin Thompson -- Publishing translations from Russian in Italy during the Cold War / Mila Milani -- Fighting with words : the role of discourses in the literary field during the cultural Cold War in the GDR / Hanna Blum -- Bellman books : selling a favorable image abroad / Musa Igrek -- Scientific American in the USSR : the semi-diplomatic spaces of Soviet-American publishing relations, 1980-1984 / Rósa Magnúsdóttir and Birgitte Beck Pristed.