The Syracuse Mission to Iran during the 1950s and the Rise of Documentary Diplomacy

This article traces the genealogy of a global surge in documentary format and infrastructure during the 1950s. This surge occurred on the heels of wider Cold War containment campaigns, which featured modernization efforts and film diplomacy in the United States, its embassies, and the offices of the United States Information Service (USIS). The article conceptualizes and investigates documentary diplomacy as a discourse that brings epistemological coherence to governmental and nongovernmental events and agents invested in the format of the documentary and its value as a means of nation-building and media governance. The case of Syracuse University’s audiovisual mission to Iran exemplifies documentary diplomacy.