Conchitina Cruz, University of the Philippines Diliman
ABSTRACT
Does cultural diplomacy work? According to a 2005 report of the Advisory Committee on Cultural Diplomacy of the U.S. Department of State, “America’s cultural riches played no less a role than military action in shaping our international leadership, including the war on terror.” When regarding cultural diplomacy in its singular instances, say, the U.S. Embassy’s sponsorship in the Philippines of a writing workshop or a conference, or its support for Filipino writers to attend a writing program in the United States, it seems absurd to claim an effect on American international standing comparable to military force. Can what appear to be such minor investments influence their beneficiaries in any consequential way? Can this influence cumulatively produce an impact that, as the report claims, strengthens the U.S.’s “national security in subtle, wide-ranging, and sustainable ways”?
In addressing these questions, this presentation focuses on the deployment of the International Writing Program (IWP) based in the University of Iowa as an apparatus of American cultural diplomacy in the Philippines. Filipinos were among the first fellows of the IWP in 1967, and a total of 43 Filipinos to date have gone to the United States as IWP fellows. In recent years, IWP has developed stronger visibility in the Philippines through programs based in Manila. By looking at IWP in relation to institutionalized creative writing in the Philippines in the aftermath of U.S. colonization, the presentation tracks the role of U.S. cultural diplomacy in the spread of a de-historicized creative writing pedagogy in Philippine academia, which has in turn cultivated a strain in Philippine literary production often described as “apolitical.” It examines the “ambient discipline” (to borrow from Joshua Clover) embedded in literary opportunities that are also openly framed projects of U.S. cultural diplomacy.
BIO
Conchitina Cruz is an associate professor of the Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of the Philippines Diliman, where she teaches literature and creative writing. A recipient of Fulbright and Rockefeller Foundation grants, she earned her Ph.D. in English at State University of New York (SUNY) Albany. Her books of poetry include Dark Hours (winner of the National Book Award for Poetry in the Philippines), elsewhere held and lingered, and There is no emergency. She helps run the DIY/small press expo Better Living Through Xeroxography (BLTX).