124267 AR Cultural/Media Studies 1/2 (AR) (2016W)

The Seminar focuses on historic and contemporary Cold War Cultures. Together, we investigate into the various ways the US-Russian relations between 1945 and 1991 (the time of the Cold War), have created very specific myths and imageries within US-politics and popular culture and ask, if or how they continue their influence within contemporary discourses. Reading landmark studies such as Fousek’s “To Lead the Free World” or Nadel’s “Containment Culture” we will learn about the topoi and narratives that constructed US-National identity in clear distinction of a ‘foreign’ enemy in the Soviet communist ‘other.’ We will learn how US issues of race, class, gender and sexuality were and are interwoven into these processes of US-Nation building and Soviet/Russian othering. Looking especially at films (All About Eve 1950, various James Bond films), tv-shows (The Americans 2014-), literature (Orwell’s 1984, Baldwin’s Giovannie’s Room), songs (“Let Them Out or Let Me In,” by MEN 2012), comics (Captain America) as well as politics, and their academic discussions in Cultural, Cinema and Media Studies literature (Corber 2011, Williams 2012) we will learn how the Cold War shaped not only national identities, but influenced and created very specific gendered and sexualized identities. We will learn about the so-called “The Lavender Scare,” the persecution of gays and lesbians during the McCarthy era and thereafter, as well as the hopes that African-American’s invested into the Soviet Propaganda of inclusivity and the end of racism under communism. Considering that the US-national discourses on issues of race, class, gender and sexuality have changed since the Old Cold War, we will ask how and in what ways these new concepts are reflected in New Cold War Popular Culture.