Dr. Harilaos Stecopoulos, Professor of English at the University of Iowa, to visit Penn State to present โDiasporic Diplomacy: Black Literary Ambassadors and the Cultural Cold Warโ
This presentation draws on Professor Stecopoulosโs recent book Telling Americaโs Story to the World: Literature,
Internationalism, Cultural Diplomacy (Oxford 2022), which reconsiders transnational American Studies in light of the struggle between U.S. cultural diplomacy and the global activism of U.S. writers. After providing an overview of the project, Professor Stecopoulos will focus on Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, and other Black literary ambassadors who worked with โand againstโthe U.S. governmentโs propaganda campaigning sub-Saharan Africa.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22
FOSTER AUDITORIUM,
102 PATERNO LIBRARY
NOONโ1:00 P.M.
Harilaos Stecopoulos is professor of English at the University of Iowa. The former editor of The Iowa Review, he has published four books: Race and the Subject of Masculinities (Duke 1997); Reconstructing the World: Southern Fictions and US Imperialisms, 1898-1976 (Cornell 2008); A History of the Literature of the U.S. South (Cambridge 2020); and Telling Americaโs Story to the World: Literature, Internationalism, Cultural Diplomacy (Oxford 2022). He is currently at work on a new project, โThe Heat of Modernity: American Modernism and the Energy Economy.โ