In France, studies on cultural diplomacy, at the crossroads between the fields of cultural history and the history of international relations, are relatively recent and still marginal. A few collective works have attempted to look at cultural diplomacy from a global perspective since the 2010s [Dulphy, et al., 2010; Dubosclard, et al., 2002] but research on cultural diplomacy remains fragmentary and mostly based on case studies. The historiography of the United States is more comprehensive and includes many analyses of soft power [Nye, 2004], the use of culture during the Second World War (through the United States Office of War Information agency) and the Cold War (anti-communist propaganda and promotion of the Western democratic model). Elsewhere, the lack of a comparable historiography in this field may be linked to the various forms cultural diplomacy can take, the challenges it represents, its fairly recent development (during the second half of the 20th century) or the difficulty of defining it.
This conference therefore intends to look at the different aspects of cultural diplomacy, and more particularly the notions of “prestige”, “influence” and “cooperation”, in relation to the national and international political context of the cases studied.
Location : Maison de la Recherche de Paris 3 – 4 rue des Irlandais Paris 5ème – Salle Claude Simon.