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National interests and cultural exchange in French and American educational travel, 1914–1970

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Abstract

In contrast to much recent scholarship focusing on the intent of the USA to exercise ‘informal American empire’ through student exchanges, this study analyses both intentions and outcomes in educational exchanges between France and the USA from 1914 to 1970. Archival research, oral interviews, and published works in both countries reveal that study abroad served national interests because American students became advocates for France as well as thoughtful nationalists by experiencing a transformative cultural exchange through learning and living in France. Thus, study abroad served both national interests and internationalism.

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Notes

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  1. Department of History, Purdue University, 672 Oval Drive, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA

    Whitney Walton

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Correspondence to Whitney Walton.

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Whitney Walton is professor of history at Purdue University. She has publishedworks on French industrialisation in the nineteenth century, French women writers and republican politics in the nineteenth century, and study abroad between France and the USA in the twentieth century, notably Internationalism, National Identities, and Study Abroad: France and the United States, 1890–1970 (Stanford University Press, 2010). Her current interests include the historian and critic Arvède Barine (pseudonym of Louise-Cécile Vincens, 1840–1908); French, British, and American interactions in the utopian community of New Harmony, Indiana, USA in the 1820s–1830s; and the ways that elite French women represented their lives during the Napoleonic era.

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Walton, W. National interests and cultural exchange in French and American educational travel, 1914–1970. J Transatl Stud 13, 344–357 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1080/14794012.2015.1088329

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