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Proseminar: Cold War Culture: A Comparative Perspective

Course Description

This seminar aims at understanding the different dimensions of the Cold War culture in the United States, Great Britain and Germany West and East. In the US, for example, the Cold War was a time where cultural difference was seen as a threat to the dominant American ideology. Cultural difference constituted, for example, homosexuality, non-White ethnicity or a strong femininity beyond the domestic sphere. This apparent fear of a cultural difference translated into the cultural output of that time, such as Hollywood movies like Don Siegel’s sci-fi flick Invasion of the Body Snatchers , or literary texts such as Joseph Heller’s postmodern novel Catch-22 or TV shows like The Twilight Zone.
The leading research question will be the treatment of the Other, esp. through questions of literary, filmic and/or musical genres. The seminar objective is to take on a comparative perspective and draw conclusions about how those cultural issues are handled in different contexts. Furthermore, implications about contemporary developments with the recent war on terror and its cultural implications in Europe and America will be made.
The structure of the seminar is divided into two major parts: The first part consists of a preparation section were an introduction to the Cold War culture is given. Students are expected to develop their own research topic. The second part consists of a student conference which will be held at the end of May 2007 where students will present their research findings in front of a public audience. Therefore, students are asked to conduct independent research and should have a sense of individual time management.

Registration:

In order to participate, students of Anglistik/Amerikanistik need to have completed the lecture course “Introduction to the Study of Literature” successfully. Please present the Schein in the first session of the course.

Credit Requirements:

Regular attendance, oral presentation at student conference, and a research paper (10-12 pages).

Literature:

Whitfield, Stephen J. (1991). The Culture of the Cold War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP.
Sinfield, Alan (1993). Literature, Culture and Politics of Postwar Britain. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Junker, Detlef, ed. (1990). Die USA und Deutschland im Zeitalter des Kalten Krieges, 1945-1990: Ein Handbuch. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt.

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