White Whales and Public Diplomacy: An American Cultural Attaché's Reflections on the August 2007 Melville and Conrad Conference in Poland

White Whales and Public Diplomacy An American Cultural Attaché’s Reflections on the August 2007 Melville and Conrad Conference in Poland JAMES A. WOLFE Cultural Affairs Officer, Embassy of the United States of America, Warsaw, Poland James A. Wolfe I t was still early in my tour of duty as Cultural Attaché in the American Embassy in Warsaw, Poland, when Professor Paweł J֒ edrzejko of the University of Silesia in Katowice visited me in my office at the beginning of 2006 and proposed that the Embassy cooperate with him in his preparations for the first conference on Herman Melville in Poland. Part of his request for a grant was based on his intention to write the first two books about Melville in the Polish language. (Melville’s writings themselves had long been available in Polish translation, but no academic works about the writer existed.) For someone in my position, the proposal of a conference and two new books on a major figure in American literature was truly a gift. The C
2008 The Authors Journal compilation C
2008 The Melville Society and Blackwell Publishing Inc L E V I A T H A N A J O U R N A L O F M E L V I L L E S T U D I E S 85 J A M E S A . W O L F E conference—“Hearts of Darkness: Melville and Conrad in the Space of World Culture”—would have its international stature ensured by the involvement of the Melville Society, its relevance in Poland by the inclusion of Polish native son Joseph Conrad (Józef Korzeniowski). Its draw and press coverage would be enhanced by holding it in the historic port town of Szczecin (Stettin in its Hanseatic past) simultaneously with Tall Ships Races. And its lasting impact would be ensured by the continued existence on the Polish market of two handsome volumes on Melville: Płynność i Egzystencja (Fluidity and Existence) and Melville w Kontekstach (Melville in Context). Enthusiastically, the Embassy delivered the requested grants, and Ambassador Victor Ashe gave his honorary patronage. Why would the United States Government care whether Poland hosts a Herman Melville conference and publishes books on an American author? And why would it offer multiple grants to support those efforts? Some conference participants clearly had asked themselves these questions and were pleasantly surprised to observe that not only had the American Embassy been an enthusiastic supporter, but that Chargé d’Affaires Kenneth Hillas and I both attended the event, along with two senior members of the Embassy’s local staff. This surprise is somewhat understandable, as the United States of America has always been an exception among its closest allies in that the government has no ministry responsible for culture. The closest we have come was the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), which was folded into the State Department in 1999 after the end of the Cold War ushered in a series of budget cuts for what is known as “public diplomacy.” American Cultural Centers and American Libraries, effective and ubiquitous tools of our efforts to win hearts and minds during the Cold War, were shuttered and their collections donated to universities with American Studies programs and other similar institutions. (The USIA officers became State Department diplomats and their jobs open for Foreign Service economic specialists, like myself, with a background in literature and theater to rediscover past loves.) Although resources are considerably less than they were fifteen years ago, U.S. Embassies still remain engaged in public diplomacy, which is the practice of using a wide variety of outreach tools to explain and present American policies, culture, and thought for foreign audiences. That support includes giving grants for American Studies programs and conferences and the publication of books related to American culture, as well as intervening with foreign government officials to encourage their support for related activities in their countries. A September 2005 Department of State Advisory Committee report describes cultural diplomacy as “the linchpin of public diplomacy; for it is in cultural activities that a nation’s idea of itself is best represented. And cultural 86 L E V I A T H A...