Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

Keywords: a Vocabulary of Culture and Society

The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act

Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

The Future of Power

This thesis explores the role of exile in the work of the Spanish Republican Arturo Barea (1897-1957). It suggests that, linked to the movements that exile generates (physical, social and intellectual), the concept of ‘transnational’ can be used as an analytical tool with which to interrogate Barea’s work and its interpretations. It was during his exile in Britain that Barea became a professional writer, a literary critic and a broadcaster for the BBC. He published his autobiographical trilogy The Forging of a Rebel, edited by T.S. Eliot, in London between 1941 and 1946. This work was immediately translated into several languages, but was only printed in Spanish in its Argentinian edition of 1951, and was not published in Spain until 1977. Through a combined reading of the trilogy alongside a larger body of fictional and non-fictional work the thesis offers a detailed historical analysis of the first context of production and reception of Barea’s writing in Britain, focusing on the period of 1938-1945. It highlights the challenges and opportunities of exile as a transnational and cosmopolitan experience, and demonstrates the different ways in which the homeland and the host state intersect in Barea’s work. Barea’s writings are read here as exercises of cross-cultural translation in which Spain, its people and the Spanish Civil War were construed for a British – and later international – public, while Britain, its people and their role in the Second World War were also interpreted for a Latin American audience. This thesis emphasizes the historical importance of the informal intellectual networks, the publishing landscape, and the ‘corporate cosmopolitanism’ of the BBC as the institutional sites in which Barea developed his work. A transnational and cosmopolitan approach can offer an avenue to analyse Spanish Republican exile cultural products in a wider historical setting.

A Spaniard in Hertfordshire : the intellectual exile of Arturo Barea

The ‘Tweeting the Olympics’ project (the subject of this special section of Participations) must be understood in the context of efforts by host states, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and other actors involved in the Games to cultivate and communicate a set of meanings to audiences about both the Olympics events and the nations taking part. Olympic Games are not only sporting competitions; they are also exercises in the management of relations between states and publics, at home and overseas, in order to augment the attractiveness and influence or the soft power of the states involved. Soft power is most successful when it goes unnoticed according to its chief proponent Joseph Nye. If so, how can we possibly know whether soft power works? This article reviews the state of the field in thinking about public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy and soft power in the period of this project (2012-14), focusing particularly on how the audiences of soft power projects, like the London and Sochi Games, were conceived and addressed. One of the key questions this project addresses is whether international broadcasters such as the BBCWS and RT used social media during the Games to promote a cosmopolitan dialogue with global audiences and/or merely to integrate social media so as to project and shape national soft power. We argue first that the contested nature of the Olympic Games calls into question received theories of soft power, public and cultural diplomacy. Second, strategic national narratives during the Olympics faced additional challenges, particularly due to the tensions between the national and the international character of the Games. Third, the new media ecology and shift to a network paradigm further threatens the asymmetric power relations of the broadcasting paradigm forcing broadcasters to reassess their engagement with what was formerly known as ‘the audience’ and the targets of soft power.

Soft power and its audiences: Tweeting the Olympics from London 2012 to Sochi 2014

Digital networks and transformations in the international news ecology: A critique of agent-centred approaches to soft power

This article examines the impacts of COVID-19 on the digital work of museums and galleries in the UK, 2020 – 2021. Focusing on social media activity, we explore two questions: (1) How did approaches to, and institutional perceptions of, social media shift during the pandemic? and (2) Looking to the future, what practical and theoretical challenges do social media present for museums and galleries, and what are the related policy implications? The discussion draws on a mixed-methods study including an analysis of 9000 tweets, and re ﬂ ective semi-structured interviews with 19 digital workers. Our ﬁ ndings can help shape global digital heritage practices as we emerge from the pandemic, enabling more dynamic and meaningful forms of cultural participation, and underpinning more con ﬁ dent and ethical social media trajectories. to

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09548963.2022.2122701?needAccess=true

Negotiating hybridity, inequality, and hyper-visibility: museums and galleries’ social media response to the COVID-19 pandemic

Arturo Barea (1897–1957) arrived in Plymouth in February 1939, one of many victims of the Spanish Civil War. It was during his exile in Britain that he became a writer, publishing his autobiographi...

Eva Nieto McAvoy

Papers

A Spaniard in Hertfordshire : the intellectual exile of Arturo Barea

Soft power and its audiences: Tweeting the Olympics from London 2012 to Sochi 2014

Digital networks and transformations in the international news ecology: A critique of agent-centred approaches to soft power

Negotiating hybridity, inequality, and hyper-visibility: museums and galleries’ social media response to the COVID-19 pandemic

A Spaniard Discovers England