Description
Amid recent calls to rethink the canon of International Relations theory to include marginalized voices, there are important questions about who should be included, how, and for what purpose. I engage these questions through an exploration of the work of Muna Lee (1895 - 1965). Lee had a genre-bending intellect, which she applied as a poet, writer, activist, administrator at the University of Puerto Rico, and official in the U.S. State Department. Her immense intellectual production included a book of poetry, five mystery novels, a children’s book, several translations, and countless book reviews and essays. This production culminated in her 1947 book with Ruth Emily McMurry The Cultural Approach: Another Way in International Relations, which advocated for mutual understanding between nations through cultural sharing. The book made few inroads into the discipline of International Relations – predictably, Hans Morgenthau found the case for cultural understanding to bear “no relation to the actualities of international politics” – and it had little impact on subsequent scholarship. The neglect of Muna Lee as a thinker of international relations would then seem to present an easy remedy: belated incorporation into the canon of great works. Yet, I argue for resisting a romanticized interpretation of both Muna Lee’s work and of the canon itself. Muna Lee was a complicated figure; her place in relation to the U.S. colonial state, for example, and her concept of culture both warrant rigorous scrutiny. I conclude, however, that it is important to recognize her “other way” as a way not taken in the study and practice of international relations.
