Campaigning Culture and the Global Cold War: The Journals of the Congress for Cultural Freedom

by Giles Scott-Smith (Editor), Charlotte A. Lerg (Editor)

Overview

This book explores the lasting legacy of the controversial project by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, funded by the CIA, to promote Western culture and liberal values in the battle of ideas with global Communism during the Cold War. One of the most important elements of this campaign was a series of journals published around the world: Encounter, Preuves, Quest, Mundo Nuevo, and many others, involving many of the most famous intellectuals to promote a global intellectual community. Some of them, such as Minerva and China Quarterly, are still going to this day. This study examines when and why these journals were founded, who ran them, and how we should understand their cultural message in relation to the secret patron that paid the bills.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781137598660
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	07/26/2017
Edition description:	1st ed. 2017
Pages:	331
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

Giles Scott-Smith holds the Ernst van der Beugel Chair in the Diplomatic History of Transatlantic Relations since WWII at Leiden University, The Netherlands. His previous books include The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, and CIA, and Postwar American Hegemony (2002).

Charlotte A. Lerg teaches history at the Amerika Institut at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany. She also serves as managing director of the Lasky Center for Transatlantic Studies.

Table of Contents

Preface; Matthew Spender.- Chapter 1: Introduction: Journals of Freedom?; Giles Scott-Smith and Charlotte Lerg.- Part 1: Science.- Chapter 2:  Science and Freedom: The Forgotten Bulletin; Audra Wolfe.- Chapter 3: Consensus, Civility, Community: Minerva and the Vision of Edward Shils; Roy Macleod.- Part 2: Europe.- Chapter 4: Der Monat and the Congress for Cultural Freedom: The High Tide of the Intellectual Cold War, 1948-1971; Michael Hochgeschwender.- Chapter 5: The Difficult Emergence of an ‘Anti-Totalitarian’ Journal in Post-War France: Preuves and the Congress for Cultural Freedom; Nicholas Stenger.- Chapter 6: ‘Our greatest asset’: Encounter Magazine and the Congress for Cultural Freedom; Jason Harding.- Chapter 7: Beyond the Cold War: Tempo Presente in Italy; Paola Carlucci and Chiara Morbi.- Chapter 8: ‘Vienna is Different’: Friedrich Torberg’s Journal Forum, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and Competing Soft-Power Strategies in the Cold War; Felix W. Tweraser.- Chapter 9: Tracking the Bear: Survey; Giles Scott-Smith.- Part 3: Latin America.- Chapter 10: Cuadernos del Congreso por la Libertad de Cultura (1953-1965) and the Failure of a Cold War Liberal Project for Latin America; Olga Glondys.- Chapter 11: Mundo Nuevo: Behind the Scenes of a Spanish Encounter; Maria Eugenia Mudrovcic.- Part 4: Africa and the Middle East.- Chapter 12: Cold War in the Arabic Press: Ḥiwār< (Beirut, 1962-67) and the Congress for Cultural Freedom; Elisabeth M. Holt.- Chapter 13: Black Orpheus and the African magazines of the Congress for Cultural Freedom; Asha Rogers.- Part 5: Asia.- Chapter 14: Japan’s CCF Affiliate, Jiyû, and Covert Public Diplomacy; Ann Sherif.- Chapter 15: Quest: Twenty Years of Cultural Politics; Eric Pullin.- Chapter 16: Quadrant: The Evolution of an Australian Conservative Journal; John Chiddick.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“For too long, scholars of the Cultural Cold War have seen the Congress for Cultural Freedom and its journals as a centralized project, with all of its messages and projects emanating from its Paris headquarters (and ultimately from its funders in Washington and London). Campaigning Culture and the Global Cold War provides a welcome corrective to this, and in looking at its many magazines not as mere mouthpieces for the Secretariat but also as expressions of their local cultural, political, and economic situations, this book shows that the CCF’s magazines were genuinely “glocal” publications. This will help us, as well, appreciate these many magazines—which published work by some of the most important writers of the day—as magazines, not just as weapons in a larger geopolitical campaign.” (Greg Barnhisel, Chair of the English Department, Duquesne University, USA)

“Transcending the binary debates of the past, this wonderfully well-conceived and executed collection combines transnational and local perspectives to provide a nuanced, fascinating, and indispensable account of the global Cultural Cold War.” (Hugh Wilford, Professor of U.S. History, California State University, Long Beach, USA)

“For too long, scholars of the Cultural Cold War have seen the Congress for Cultural Freedom and its journals as a centralized project, with all of its messages and projects emanating from its Paris headquarters (and ultimately from its funders in Washington and London). [Title] provides a welcome corrective to this, and in looking at its many magazines not as mere mouthpieces for the Secretariat but also as expressions of their local cultural, political, and economic situations, this book shows that the CCF’s magazines were genuinely “glocal” publications. This will help us, as well, appreciate these many magazines—which published work by some of the most important writers of the day—as magazines, not just as weapons in a larger geopolitical campaign.” (Greg Barnhisel, Chair of the English Department, Duquesne University, USA)