Book Talk: Film Diplomacy: A Media History of Turkey-US Relations

Join us for a talk with Jülide Etem on her new book, Film Diplomacy, a compelling study of how educational films became a powerful yet often overlooked instrument of diplomacy, nation-building, and modernization in the twentieth century.

Drawing on previously unexamined and recently declassified archives in Turkey and the United States, Etem traces how film helped forge the U.S.-Turkey alliance, advance Cold War objectives, and shape competing visions of citizenship and national identity. Moving beyond conventional accounts of propaganda and soft power, Film Diplomacy reveals how educational cinema circulated ideas about progress, development, and belonging while reinforcing racialized understandings of modernity.

This event will be of interest to scholars and students of media, communications, history, international relations, Middle East studies, and the politics of culture and representation.

Jülide Etem is assistant professor of media studies and director of the film studies concentration at the University of Virginia.