The Professor was a Spy

Name: The Professor was a Spy
Start: 2025-02-17T19:00:00-06:00
Location: 101 E Archer St, Tulsa, OK, United States, Oklahoma 74103

Schedule

Mon, 17 Feb, 2025 at 07:00 pm

UTC-06:00

Location

101 E Archer St, Tulsa, OK, United States, Oklahoma 74103 | Tulsa, OK

Norman Holmes Pearson might have looked like the tweedy Yale professor he was, but he was one of the most consequential figures in twentieth-century American literature; an architect of the Cold War collaboration between academia and cultural diplomacy; and a high-ranking spy in the OSS and one of the shapers of the CIA.
In this talk (drawn from his new book CODE NAME PURITAN: NORMAN HOLMES PEARSON AT THE NEXUS OF POETRY, ESPIONAGE, AND AMERICAN POWER), Greg Barnhisel will give an overview of Pearson’s unique career as a spymaster, cultural diplomat, and literary fixer, and reflect on whether the unlikely combination that Pearson represented might have been a secret weapon for the U.S. in the Cold War. Book signing to follow. Magic City Books will be onsite selling copies.