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

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Pennsylvania Press Complete eBook-Package 2017
• VerfasserIn: Smith, Richard Candida,; Smith, Richard Cándida,
• Place / Publishing House: Philadelphia : : University of Pennsylvania Press, , [2017]; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Series: The Arts and Intellectual Life in Modern America
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (352 p.) :; 27 illus.

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. Pan-American Culture -- Chapter 2. National Ways of Looking -- Chapter 3. “In the American Grain” -- Chapter 4. The Muralists Arrive -- Chapter 5. Responding to Global Crisis -- Chapter 6. Making Latin American Allies Visible -- Chapter 7. “Black Cat on a Field of Snow” -- Chapter 8. On the Road for the Good Neighbor Policy -- Chapter 9. Postwar Transitions: From “Exchange” to “Information” -- Chapter 10. Taking Sides in the Cold War -- Chapter 11. The New Latin American Novel in the United States -- Chapter 12. “I Now Believe That American Imperialism Is Real” -- Chapter 13. Exiting Pan-Americanism -- Chapter 14. A Twenty-First- Century American Epiphany -- Appendix -- Notes -- Index -- Acknowledgments