Soft Power: American Cultural Diplomacy, Cold War Policy, and a Post-Cold War World

As a Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Brown is currently affiliated with the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow, where she is teaching a course entitled “Made in the U.S.A.: American Bodies as History, 1900-1960.” Outside the classroom, Brown is immersed in research for her book Cultural Czars. Intrigued by how perceptions of something, or someone, as “American” have changed in an increasingly globalized world, Brown’s work resides at the intersection of cultural diplomacy, national identity, the arts, and the physical body. Using Cold War dance diplomacy as a case study, Cultural Czars argues that the investment in a distinctly American ballet following World War II begged a question: could a physical form, a body and its movement, articulate nationality—and transcend visual markers like race? Brown contends that the postwar emphasis on abstraction across all dance genres forced vested parties to reconsider what made a body “American,” “Russian,” or “Soviet.” Her time in Russia is dedicated to conducting interviews with Russian dancers and Goskoncert officials active during the Cold War. A professionally trained classical dancer, Brown received her AB from Smith College and her doctorate in U.S. history from Harvard University. A U.S. Department of Education Jacob K. Javits Fellow from 2000-2004 and Joint Fellow at the Smithsonian National Museums of American Art and American History in 2006, Dr. Brown will join the faculty of High Point University, in High Point, N.C., as Assistant Professor of U.S. History upon her return from Russia.