Martha Bayles

Former Visiting Fellow

At A Glance:

Martha Bayles is a visiting fellow at Hudson Institute. She writes and lectures frequently about the arts, music, media, and public diplomacy.

Biography

Martha Bayles was a visiting fellow at Hudson Institute. She writes and lectures frequently about the arts, music, media, and public diplomacy. Her latest book, Through a Screen Darkly: Popular Culture, Public Diplomacy, and America’s Image Abroad (Yale 2014) was described by the Weekly Standard as "a brilliant and courageous meditation on the difficulty of communication between modern and traditional societies”; and by American Diplomacy as “the freshest and most original treatment of US public diplomacy in many years.”

Dr. Bayles’s television column for the Wall Street Journal first established her as a significant critical voice. Her book, Hole Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music (Free Press 1994) was praised by jazz legend Sonny Rollins as “an illuminating look at where American culture is today, and how it got there.” Former literary editor of the Wilson Quarterly, Bayles has been a frequent contributor to the New York Times, the Washington Post, Atlantic Monthly, the New Republic, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Newsweek, and many other publications. Today she writes regularly for the Boston Globe and the Weekly Standard. And since 2006 she has written the “Shadow Play” column on film and television for the Claremont Review of Books.

A native of Boston, Dr. Bayles has been a visiting scholar at the Getty Institute in Los Angeles, a Fulbright lecturer in Poland, and arts correspondent for the PBS program, Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. After graduating from Harvard, she taught public school in Philadelphia, Boston, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Between 1997 and 2003 she was professor of humanities at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California. In 2003 she joined the faculty of the Boston College Arts & Sciences Honor Program, where she is now visiting associate professor of the practice of the humanities.

Dr. Bayles lives in Newton, Massachusetts with her husband, Peter Skerry.

Events
18
April 2017
Past Event
ISIS, Russia, and China: Can America Win a Three-Front Information War?
Featured Speakers:
Eric Brown
(enot-poloskun/Getty Images)
18
April 2017
Past Event
ISIS, Russia, and China: Can America Win a Three-Front Information War?

Jeffrey Gedmin, Martha Bayles, and Eric Brown discuss how the U.S. should respond to radical jihadist, Russian, and Chinese propaganda

(enot-poloskun/Getty Images)
Featured Speakers:
Eric Brown
01
December 2016
Past Event
Kleptocracy and Democracy Debate Series: The Crisis of Big Money Media
Featured Speakers:
Megan McArdle
(Swell Media/Getty Images)
01
December 2016
Past Event
Kleptocracy and Democracy Debate Series: The Crisis of Big Money Media

Martha Bayles and Megan McArdle debate whether it is time to rein in kleptocrats who try to dominate the world's media. Jeffrey Gedmin moderates.

(Swell Media/Getty Images)
Featured Speakers:
Megan McArdle
Broadcasting to the world, the USA state department dispenses information to foreign countries throughout the world by way of VOA (Voice of America). (Photo by Three Lions/Getty Images)
Caption
The US State Department dispenses information to foreign countries throughout the world by way of VOA (Voice of America) circa 1950. (Photo by Three Lions/Getty Images)
Martha Bayles
Former Visiting Fellow
Martha Bayles
Commentary
1 Min Read
Fans gather around a statue of Bruce Lee to mark the 40th anniversary of his death, on the Avenue of the Stars in Hong Kong on July 20, 2013. Lee helped put Hong Kong on the movie world map. (ANTHONY WALLACE/Getty Images)
Caption
Fans gather around a statue of Bruce Lee to mark the 40th anniversary of his death, on the Avenue of the Stars in Hong Kong on July 20, 2013. Lee helped put Hong Kong on the movie world map. (ANTHONY WALLACE/Getty Images)
Martha Bayles
Former Visiting Fellow
Martha Bayles
Commentary
3 Min Read