COLD WAR CULTURE

History 202A  Fall 2006

Thursday, 400-650pm  KH126

Instructor: Jon Wiener, KH 229; 824-6339; Wiener@UCI.edu.

SEMINAR TOPICS AND READING ASSIGNMENTS

Week 1: Introduction: Cold War Culture

            VIDEO: Kevin Rafferty & Jane Loader, “Atomic Café”

Week 2: The Road Not Taken

            George Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and Culture in the 1940s

            VIDEO: Herbert Biberman, "Salt of the Earth" (1954)

            SUPPLEMENTARY: Judith Stepan-Norris and Maruice Zeitlin, Left Out: Reds and

America’s Industrial Unions

            Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the

Twentieth Century

Week 3: Anti-Communism: Purging the Culture Industry

            Victor Navasky, Naming Names

            VIDEO: Elia Kazan, "On the Waterfront" (1954)

SUPPLEMENTARY: David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War

Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government

Ellen Schrecker, No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities

Week 4: Family Values: Women and Domesticity

            Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound

Ricki Solinger, Wake Up Little Susie

            VIDEO: Nicholas Ray, "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955)

SUPPLEMENTARY: Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass

Consumption in Postwar America

Week 5: Gender and Foreign Policy

            K.A. Cuordileone, Manhood and American Political Culture

VIDEO: “The Incredible Shrinking Man” (1957)

SUPPLEMENTARY: James Gilbert, Men in the Middle: Masculinity in the 1950s

Laura McEnaney, Civil Defense Begins at Home: Militarization Meets Everyday Life in the Fifties

Week 6: Sixties Youth Rebellion

            Beth Bailey,  Sex in the Heartland

            VIDEO:  Doris Day & Rock Hudson, “Pillow Talk” (1959)

            SUPPLEMENTARY: Todd Gitlin, The Sixties:Years of Hope, Days of Rage

James Miller, "Democracy Is in the Streets": From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago

Week 7: The Rise of the Right

Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: Origins of the New American Right

VIDEO: Robert Aldrich, "Kiss Me Deadly" (1955)

SUPPLEMENTARY: Becky Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the

Working Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965

Rick Pearlstein,  Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of  Consensus

Week 8:  Globalization and Consumption

            Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America's Advance Through 20th-Cent. Europe

            VIDEO: Alfred Hitchcock, “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (1956)

            SUPPLEMENTARY:  Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S.

            Interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000

Christopher Endy, Cold War Holidays: American Tourism in France

Week 9: Cold War Culture

            Penny von Eschen, Satchmo Blows up the World

VIDEO: TBA

SUPPLEMENTARY: David Caute, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural

Supremacy during the Cold War

Week 10: Power in Los Angeles

Mike Davis, City of Quartz

VIDEO: Orson Welles, "Touch of Evil" (1958)

SUPPLEMENTARY: Kevin Starr, Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace,

1940-1950