Project

Americas Mapped: Mass Media and the Construction of “American” Geography, 1938-1948

Program

Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowships

Department

History

Abstract

“Americas Mapped” connects the rise of transnational mass media outlets with inter-American diplomacy and the history of geography. It focuses on three major media forms: mass-produced maps (on high demand during the war), the rise of Selecciones del Reader’s Digest; and the popular consumption of the radio programming of Ecuador-based Evangelical missionary radio station HCJB. It shows how international and national politics converged in the production and consumption of these medias, and how their consumption played a part in national histories and social/cultural movements of Argentina and Ecuador.