Mark Bradley and Amira Jarmakani are both interested in culture as a lens for thinking through how Americans understand US global engagement. They are also both interested in how those US global engagements shape American culture. What do you find interesting about their arguments and approaches?

Bevan Sewell and Maria Ryan argue that their focus on US foreign policy in areas deemed “beyond Washington’s core interests” helps to expose a far larger variation in US foreign policy that both scholars and American popular memory have ignored. Did their collection change how you think about and assess US global engagements? If so, how? Choose two pieces to use as examples of how your thinking has (or hasn’t) changed.

NOTE: I uploaded the entire eBook onto the Dropbox, but I have assigned the following chapters: Introduction, Chapters 2, 3, 5, 8, 10, 12, and 14.

Both authors here are interested in the Cold War and decolonization. Kwak discusses aid and advisement, while Hardy discusses coups and interventions, but both examine in how the interests of U.S. capital shaped the United States’ global engagements. Both authors are also interested in the ways that U.S. Cold War engagements were affected by local circumstances. What observations do you have about how these two pieces fit together, complement each other, or offer quite different contributions to this discussion?

Emily Rosenberg and Shanon Fitzpatrick explore three themes as they relate to “the body in the nation.” They also argue that “the body is an especially contested site for national definition.” These authors focus on ideas about bodies and their relationships to nations. They link these debates to discussions of international relations as well as global migrations of people and cultures. What do yo think about their approach? Choose at least two articles to discuss in your response.