Books
Courtesy of the Gerald Ford Presidential Library and Museum, Betty Ford, White House Papers, and the Library of Congress, Music Division. No photographer credited, undated photograph.
Martha Graham's Cold War:
The Dance of American Diplomacy
“I am not a propagandist,” declared the matriarch of American modern dance Martha Graham while on her State Department funded-tour in 1955. Graham’s claim inspires questions: the United States government exported Graham and her company internationally to over twenty-seven countries representing every seated president from Dwight D. Eisenhower through Ronald Reagan, and planned to continue under George H.W. Bush. She intersected with politically powerful women in a story of "Good Old Women's History" from Eleanor Dulles, sister of Eisenhower’s Dulles brothers in the State Department and CIA, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, to political matriarch Barbara Bush. With her tours and modernist aesthetic, Graham represented American Cold War ideology globally. Her political biography demonstrates the power of the individual, immigrants, republicanism, and, ultimately, freedom from walls and metaphorical fences with cultural diplomacy through the unfettered language of movement and dance. Learn more at Oxford University Press.
Praise for Martha Graham's Cold War...
"Phillips effectively combines a survey of cultural diplomacy during the Cold War with an examination of Graham’s outsize role in the history of American dance, and interviews with Graham company dancers formed part of her research... Phillips offers valuable insight into how the United States used dance as a propaganda tool." - Kirkus Reviews
"Scholars and general readers alike will appreciate how Victoria Phillips focuses on the era’s most innovative dancer to craft her rich history of the Cold War. Highly recommended!” - Emily S. Rosenberg, Co-editor of Body and Nation: The Global Realm of U.S. Body Politics in the Twentieth Century
"Meticulously researched and impassioned, Martha Graham's Cold War is essential reading for scholars of cultural diplomacy, the Cold War, and the history of dance." - Laura A. Belmonte, author of Selling the American Way: US Propaganda and the Cold War
Read Full Reviews
(the Dance Magazine
of Israel)
Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication (George Washington University)
"The strength of this superbly researched book lies in the voice it gives to the many diplomats, journalists, and cultural figures with first-hand knowledge of Martha Graham’s four decades of cultural diplomacy." - Bruce Gregory, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, George Washington University
Women's History Network
"Highly Recommended" Certification
“Martha Graham’s Cold War is an impressive, engaging and original study that addressed the role of dance in the cultural strategies of Cold War diplomacy. It is a highly interesting exploration of ‘soft power’, written in a lucid and accessible style yet maintains scholarly rigour, incorporating a wide range of archival and secondary sources.”
Articles
“Red Carnations,” American Communist History, (February, 2018): 1-3.
For a complete listing of Dr. Phillips' work, click here