My dissertation shows how twentieth century American writers built what I call “paraliterary” institutions: institutions that incorporate literary-aesthetic forms into their communicative habits and discourses, but have little to do with the conventional sites and spaces of literary production. In case studies that range from early Junior Year Abroad programs to the American Express Company, I trace how writers from Henry James to Dave Eggers circulated their literary fictions as aestheticized descriptions of how people operating under the auspices of institutions ought to be and behave—descriptions that fundamentally altered institutional practices of being and belonging and created new aesthetic problems for writers to address in their fictions. While my project spans from the nineteenth century to the present, my focus is on the postwar institutions that were invested in showcasing American cultural production to the rest of the world. Drawing on unexplored texts and archives, I tell the institutional story of how postwar American culture was organized as a coherent structure and circulated around the world.