Introduction

Abstract

The introduction begins with an overview of how cold war modernism figures prominently in US cultural diplomacy studies and argues for a broader understanding of literature’s relationship to propaganda in the postwar era. This necessitates a discussion of propaganda as transmission. The next section of the introduction analyses the relationship between liberal internationalism and cultural diplomacy in the US context with a particular focus on the idealistic concept of a Parliament of Man. I then shift to a general discussion of US literary ambassadors and US literary propagandists from Sherwood Anderson to Amy Tan. The final portion of the introduction summarizes each of the book’s chapters.