Cold War Cultures: Eastern, Western, and Global Perspectives (Cultural Studies Colloquium) #WueOnline #WueGlobal - In Cooperation with Jawaharlal Nehru University and Jamia Millia Islamia (A Central University) / New Delhi and JMU Slavic Studies

This transdisciplinary research seminar re-investigates the so-called ‘Cold War,’ i.e. the period from the end of the Second World War to the late 1980s which was dominated by the political, economic and ideological antagonism between a Western bloc (led by the USA and NATO) and an Eastern bloc (led by the USSR and the Warsaw Pact). As part of our series of Cultural Studies Colloquia, the seminar will be primarily interested in how the major powers mobilized culture as a medium of geopolitical confrontation. At the same time, we will analyse the concrete cultural effects of such a transnational cultural politics in countries and regions across the globe.

For example, how did 'Cold War' cultural diplomacy shape national and transnational print cultures and the arts not only in Russia and the USA, but also in India, Britain and other European countries? How, e.g., did specific genres of writing (such as the spy novel) or specific clichés in popular music ("Back in the USSR"; "I hope the Russians Love their Children Too") operate within the Cold War as a matrix of political tensions and ideological formations that continues to shape our very present? Further, how did Soviet and Western Cold War cultures differ not only in their 'official,' state-sponsored cultures, but also in terms of  'unofficial' cultural practices. Equally important, in which modes and moments did these two geopolitically opposed formations actually converge? The last question involves considering responses to key historical events anchored in one geopolitical bloc, but inevitably impacting the opposed bloc and reverberating across larger global contexts (e.g. the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, Gagarin's orbital space flight and the accomplishment of the Sputnik launch followed by ‘Sputnik Shock')?

Das Seminar findet wöchentlich statt. Seminarsprache: Englisch

Voraussetzung für Teilnahme: Statement of Interest, keine offene Anmeldung. Trotz abgelaufener Anmeldefrist ist die Anmeldung per Mail weiterhin direkt möglich!

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