Narrative, Identity, and the Map of Cultural Policy

The story of arts and cultural policy in the twenty-first century is inherently of global concern no matter how local it seems. At the same time, questions of identity have in many ways become more challenging than before. Narrative, Identity, and the Map of Cultural Policy: Once Upon a Time in a Globalized World explores how and why stories and identities sometimes merge and often clash in an arena in which culture and policy may not be able to resolve every difficulty. DeVereaux and Griffin argue that the role of narrative is key to understanding these issues. They offer a wide-ranging history and justification for narrative frameworks as an approach to cultural policy and open up a wider field of discussion about the ways in which cultural politics and cultural identity are being deployed and interpreted in the present, with deep roots in the past. This timely book will be of great interest not just to students of narrative and students of arts and cultural policy, but also to administrators, policy theorists, and cultural management practitioners.

Constance DeVereaux is Associate Professor in the LEAP Institute for the Arts at Colorado State University. She served as a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Arts/Cultural Policy and Arts/Cultural Management at universities in Finland, South Africa, and Romania and has worked with municipalities in developing policies for cultural development. She has published internationally on topics relating to cultural policy and the discourse of practice. She co-organized the international symposium series Cultural Management and the State of the Field and is editor of the publication series of the same title. Martin Griffin is associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Among the topics that interest him are the role played by narrative in cross-cultural exchange, and the relationship between literary culture and diplomacy in American history. He is the author of Ashes of the Mind: War and Memory in Northern Literature, 1865-1900 (University of Massachusetts Press, 2009) and is currently working on an edited collection of essays entitled American Political Fictions.