Andrea Orzoff

Interwar Czechoslovakia's propaganda effort was led almost entirely by literary intellectuals, who crafted a durable mythology of the new nation. This mythology still shapes European and American attitudes towards Czechoslovakia and Eastern Europe. I am applying for an ACLS Fellowship to finish my book, Battle for the Castle: Intellectuals and Propaganda in Czechoslovakia, 1918-1938, which links the Czechoslovak national myth, and the concrete achievements of the Czechoslovak propaganda apparatus between 1918 and 1945, to wider conclusions about twentieth-century European political culture, the role of literary intellectuals in state-building, and the relationship between propaganda, national identity, and international relations.

The project, “Music in Flight,” combining personal biographies and fine-grained cultural and political analysis, follows European classical musicians (composers, conductors, and instrumentalists) from Central Europe to the ports and capital cities of Latin America between 1933 and 1960. It shows that these European refugees brought not only their highly refined musical training but also a cosmopolitan interest in other cultures, ideas about the public sphere and music’s place in it, and a deep concern about right-wing populism. The study situates the political and cultural impact of this European musical migration within a careful depiction of the complex Latin American context.