Cold War Encounters

2020/2021

Academic Year

ENG

Instruction in English

6

ECTS credits

Delivered by:

Department of History

Type:

Elective course

When:

2 year, 1, 2 module

Instructors

Lajus, Julia

Chunikhin, Kirill

Course Syllabus

Abstract

This course will demonstrate that the Cold War is not a merely chronological context, but an epistemological framework essential for interpreting postwar history. We will start from researching competing historiographical accounts of the Cold War. This is to introduce students to the basics of the Cold War while allowing them to keep a critical distance from empirical material. In its core, this course examines the Cold War as a period of both tensions and cooperations across the Iron Curtain from 1946 to 1991. While considering traditional and novel approaches, we will treat the Cold War as a global phenomenon which defined political cultural histories in the East and West. Uncovering economic, technological, environmental, and aesthetical dimensions of the Cold War, we will trace unique biographies of various actors from institutions to individuals, from officials to civilians, from politicians to tourists.

Learning Objectives

• Overcoming dominant understanding of the Cold War as a political rivalry, we will discuss the significance of economic and cultural developments as can be seen in the history of exchange visits, mutual projects, international fairs and exhibitions, scientific cooperation, etc. Such themes as technological and cultural modernity; economic competition; decolonization and technological aid to the Third World; technology transfers and encounters of small actors; and imagining the other are covered within the course as well. Such research optics allows examining trajectories of communism and capitalism in different parts of the globe while revealing international tensions and cooperation. Upon completion of the course, the students will have a firm knowledge of the period and a full-fledged understanding of manifold of historical approaches.

Expected Learning Outcomes

• Is able to improve and develop his intellectual and cultural level, to build a trajectory of professional development and career
• Able to organize and manage multilateral communication
• Able to perform professional activities, including research and development activities in the international environment
• Able to perform research with modern research methods and techniques, using knowledge of the humanities and social sciences and close scientific fields of knowledge
• Is able to perform interdisciplinary interaction and cooperation with representatives of other fields of knowledge while solving research and applied tasks
• Is able to analyze historical sources, scientific texts and reports, to review scientific literature in Russian and foreign languages
• Assesses information and predicts given objectives (ПК-9) Is able to analyze and propose scientific interpretation of historical events in their interrelation

Course Contents

• Cold War Basics. Introduction
• Poetics of Atom
• Construction and Studies of Cold War Global Commons (Oceans, Antarctic, Space)
• Domestic Fronts of Cultural Cold War
  Cold War Binaries and Art
• Hot Art and Culture during the Cold War
• Technology of the Cold War
• Cold War Modernities
• Many spaces/places of the Cold War: From Binary to Global
  Lecture&seminar
• Environmental Cold War
• Cold War Commemoration
• Cold War Ideologies
  Lecture&seminar
• The End: Reasons and Interpretations
  Lecture&seminar

Assessment Elements

• Final essay
  Final essay should be five – seven pages long. The theme of the essay must be related to the themes of the course and should be chosen by the student consulting the instructor and must address an aspect related to the course.
• Participation in seminars

Interim Assessment

• Interim assessment (2 module)
  0.3 * Final discussion + 0.3 * Final essay + 0.4 * Participation in seminars

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

• Brown, A. (2007). Perestroika and the End of the Cold War. Cold War History, 7(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.1080/14682740701197631
• Gabrielle Hecht. (2011). Entangled Geographies : Empire and Technopolitics in the Global Cold War. The MIT Press.
• Glenthøj, R. (2016). Rosanna Farbøl. “Commemoration of a Cold War: The Politics of History and Heritage at Cold War Memory sites in Denmark.” Cold War History 15:4 (2015): 471-490. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14682745.2015.1028532. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsbas&AN=edsbas.696C0198
• Sara Lorenzini. (2019). Global Development : A Cold War History. Princeton University Press.
• The Cambridge history of the Cold War / ed. by Melvyn P. Leffler . (2010). Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edswao&AN=edswao.468196099

Recommended Additional Bibliography

• Smetana, V., & Kramer, M. (2014). Imposing, Maintaining, and Tearing Open the Iron Curtain : The Cold War and East-Central Europe, 1945–1989. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=670088
• Tony Shaw, & Denise J. Youngblood. (2014). Cinematic Cold War : The American and Soviet Struggle for Hearts and Minds. [N.p.]: University Press of Kansas. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=2107963