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The term “soft power” was coined in 1990 to foreground a capacity in statecraft analogous to military might and economic coercion: getting others to want what you want. Emphasizing the magnetism of values, culture, and communication, this concept promised a future in which cultural institutes, development aid, public diplomacy, and trade policies replaced nuclear standoffs. Victoria de Grazia, Burcu Baykurt, and Oliver Stuenkel will discuss the genealogy of how soft power came to define the interregnum between the celebration of global capitalism in the 1990s and the recent resurgence of nationalism and authoritarianism, based on the recent book, Soft Power Internationalism: Competing for Cultural Influence in the 21st-Century Global Order.

Victoria de Grazia is Moore Collegiate Professor of History at Columbia University and a founding editor of Radical History Review. Her books include Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance Through Twentieth-Century Europe (2005) and The Perfect Fascist: A Story of Love, Power, and Morality in Mussolini’s Italy (2020).

Burcu Baykurt is an assistant professor of communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

Oliver Della Costa Stuenkel is an Associate Professor at the School of International Relations at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) in São Paulo. He is also a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC, a non-resident Fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) in Berlin, and a columnist for EL PAÍS and Americas Quarterly.

Please note this CHI Salon will be recorded for public and archival purposes.

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Heather Grimes
(413) 542-5870
Please call the college operator at 413-542-2000 or e-mail info@amherst.edu if you require contact info @amherst.edu