Improvised Continent : Pan-Americanism and Cultural Exchange / Richard Cándida Smith.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cándida Smith, Richard, author.

Series:

Arts and intellectual life in modern America.

The Arts and Intellectual Life in Modern America

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Pan-Americanism.

United States--Relations--Latin America--History.

United States.

Latin America--Relations--United States--History.

Latin America.

Genre:

History

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (342 pages) : illustrations.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2017]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

In Improvised Continent, Richard Cándida Smith synthesizes over seventy years of Pan-American cultural activity in the United States and shows how Latin American artists and writers challenged U.S. citizens about their place in the world and about the kind of global relations the country's interests could allow.

How does a country in the process of becoming a world power prepare its citizens for the responsibilities of global leadership? In Improvised Continent, Richard Cándida Smith answers this question by illuminating the forgotten story of how, over the course of the twentieth century, cultural exchange programs, some run by the government and others by philanthropies and major cultural institutions, brought many of the most important artists and writers of Latin America to live and work in the United States. Improvised Continent is the first book to focus on cultural exchange inside the United States and how Americans responded to Latin American writers and artists. Moving masterfully between the history of ideas, biography, institutional history and politics, and international relations, and engaging works in French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese, Cándida Smith synthesizes over seventy years of Pan-American cultural activity in the United States. The stories behind Diego Rivera's murals, the movies of Alejandro G. Iñárritu, the poetry of Gabriela Mistral, the photography of Genevieve Naylor, and the novels of Carlos Fuentes--these works and artists, along with many others, challenged U.S. citizens about their place in the world and about the kind of global relations the country's interests could allow. Improvised Continent provides a profoundly compassionate portrayal of the Latin American artists and writers who believed their practices might create a more humane world.

Contents:

Pan-American culture

National ways of looking

"In the American grain"

The muralists arrive

Responding to global crisis

Making Latin American allies visible

"Black cat on a field of snow"

On the road for the good neighbor policy

Postwar transitions: from "exchange" to "information"

Taking sides in the Cold War

The new Latin American novel in the United States

"I now believe that American imperialism is real"

Exiting pan-Americanism

A twenty-first-century American epiphany.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 281-330) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 25. Jul 2018)

ISBN:

9780812294651

0812294653

OCLC:

1005496277