Culture Matters: Anglo-American Relations and the Intangibles of 'Specialness'

Description

This book examines the ways cultural connections, constructs, and representations have impacted the history of the Anglo-American special relationship. Its multidisciplinary approach illuminates the mosaic of cultural connections that have simultaneously influenced elite decision-making and sculpted popular attitudes toward and expectations of the special relationship. -- .

Robert M. Hendershot is Professor of History in the Department of Social Sciences at Grand Rapids Community College, Michigan Steve Marsh is Reader in International Relations at Cardiff University -- .

'Since the 1960s, the cultural turn has transformed the academic study of politics and economics. Perhaps because it often focuses on the poor and the powerless, the cultural turn has been less prominent in diplomatic history. Consequently, the 11 authors whose essays make up Culture Matters are innovative in their exploration of the Anglo-American "special relationship," which encompasses P. G. Wodehouse, Hollywood, Downton Abbey, and Beatlemania, among other subjects. Sam Edwards's fascinating chapter looks at George Washington in "'A Great Englishman': George Washington and Anglo-American Memory Diplomacy, c. 1890-1925." Throughout the text, identity, memory, and symbolic representation crowd out traditional topics. For more on the cultural-turn context, Pedro Aires Oliveira, Bruno Cardoso Reis, and Patrick Finney's "The Cultural Turn and Beyond in International History" in The International History Review (2018) provides an overview, and Elizabeth T. Kenney, Sirpa Salenius, and Whitney Womack Smith's "Blurring Boundaries: Race and Transatlantic Identities in Culture and Society" offers an example of its application in the Journal of Transatlantic Studies (2016). The impressive volume under review shows how "culture matters to the vitality of the Anglo-American special relationship and to our understanding of it" (p. 271). Aimed at enlarging what has been a marginal field of study, it includes an extensive bibliography. ' CHOICE Magazine -- .