Introduction and Conclusion for monograph "The Stowe Effect: The Orientalization of Sentiment in America's Cultural Cold War"

FAIN: FT-229839-15

Danielle Glassmeyer
Bradley University (Peoria, IL 61625-0001)

Summer research and writing on American Literature and Studies and U.S. History.

I will complete the introduction and conclusion for "The Stowe Effect: the Orientalization of Sentiment in America's Cultural Cold War." This book investigates how 1950s popular culture convinced an isolationist audience that intervention in Southeast Asia was desirable. I focus on three texts that use sentiment to make their cases: The King and I (1956); Tom Dooley's memoirs about Medico, (1956-61); The Ugly American (1958). I examine the 1950s texts as recurrences of the "Stowe effect," a persistent discursive thread of powerful tropes and methods that originate in Stowe's call for abolition. I trace this effect as it develops in relation to manual education at the influential Hampton Institute, and as it further develops in Pearl Buck's calls for Asia-focused social interventions. This genealogy reveals how sentiment in 1950s texts gains impact through a connection to Stowe that suggests it is part of a tradition fundamental to American identity.