Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961

Christina Klein

Published by University of California Press 2003

Cold War Orientalism

Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961

Christina Klein

https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520936256

Overview
Contents

About this book

In the years following World War II, American writers and artists produced a steady stream of popular stories about Americans living, working, and traveling in Asia and the Pacific. Meanwhile the U.S., competing with the Soviet Union for global power, extended its reach into Asia to an unprecedented degree. This book reveals that these trends—the proliferation of Orientalist culture and the expansion of U.S. power—were linked in complex and surprising ways. While most cultural historians of the Cold War have focused on the culture of containment, Christina Klein reads the postwar period as one of international economic and political integration—a distinct chapter in the process of U.S.-led globalization.

Through her analysis of a wide range of texts and cultural phenomena—including Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific and The King and I, James Michener's travel essays and novel Hawaii, and Eisenhower's People-to-People Program—Klein shows how U.S. policy makers, together with middlebrow artists, writers, and intellectuals, created a culture of global integration that represented the growth of U.S. power in Asia as the forging of emotionally satisfying bonds between Americans and Asians. Her book enlarges Edward Said's notion of Orientalism in order to bring to light a cultural narrative about both domestic and international integration that still resonates today.

Author / Editor information

Klein Christina :

Christina Klein is Associate Professor of Literature at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 1. Sentimental Education: Creating a Global Imaginary of Integration Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	19
Chapter 2. Reader’s Digest, Saturday Review, and the Middlebrow Aesthetic of Commitment Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	61
Chapter 3. How to Be an American Abroad: James Michener’s The Voice of Asia and Postwar Mass Tourism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	100
Chapter 4. Family Ties as Political Obligation: Oscar Hammerstein II, South Pacific, and the Discourse of Adoption Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	143
Chapter 5. Musicals and Modernization: The King and I Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
Chapter 6. Asians in America: Flower Drum Song and Hawaii Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	223
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	265
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	277
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	303

Language: English
Publisher: University of California Press
Pages
- Main content: 336

eBook

Published: March 10, 2003
ISBN: 9780520936256