Cold War Cultures: Interdisciplinary and Transnational Perspectives
Conference at the University of Texas at Austin
September 30 - October 3, 2010
If war is the continuation of politics by other means, then Cold War politics can be seen as a continuation of war by other means. This interdisciplinary conference seeks to explore these means in the context of global encounters between states and "Blocs" as well as engagements with "East" and "West." Indeed, after the end of the Second World War, a new kind of "war" continued and expanded as governments and/or interest groups created and continually reshaped institutions, media, popular culture, and various elements of social and political life.
Globally, these broad-based transformations took place in the shadow of Cold War politics, especially as expressed through rhetoric of threat and mutual annihilation. In particular, cultural phenomena shaped by Cold War power conflicts take on myriad forms in a host of geographic contexts, both in and outside the Bloc, from iconic public representations to distinctive media advertising, memorable political speeches, world expositions, spy novels and films, and a plethora of official and popular modes of expression. In some places, of course, military or paramilitary conflagrations translated Cold War politics into "hot" wars, which further fueled the fire of Cold War imaginations.
Cold War Cultures: Interdisciplinary and Transnational Perspectives is a four-day conference at the University of Texas at Austin planned as the culmination of a series of events held in Fall, 2010, on the campus. This conference will offer the chance to reconsider the Cold War of the post-World-II era in its global configuration, and as a theoretical paradigm like Hardt and Negri's Empire -- as not just characteristic of one historical moment, but perhaps also as a paradigm for particular configurations of forces joining national and trans-national or global sites of contention.
These events will include the conference, several keynote speeches by international and local scholars, and a film series; more details to come. Because of the generosity of our sponsors, all events will be free of charge and open to the public.
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:
with schedules
Ambassador Robert Hutchings (LBJ School of Public Affairs, UT Austin)
"American Diplomacy and the End of the Cold War"
6:00PM, Thursday, 30 September 2010
Muhsin Jassim Al-Musawi (Arabic Literature, Columbia University)
"Literature at War: Beirut, Rome, and Baghdad"
6:00 PM, Friday, 1 October 2010
Greg Grandin (History, Yale University)
"The Three Faces of Containment in the Americas"
11:00 AM, Friday, 1 October 2010
John D. Kelly (Anthropology, University of Chicago)
"When in the Course of Human Events? Situating the Cold War"
1:00 PM, Friday, 1 October 2010
Kate Brown (History, University of Maryland, Baltimore County)
"Big Brother®--Made in America: How Soviet Agents Stole American Secrets to Create the Nuclear Security State "
1:00 PM, Saturday, 2 October 2010
Nicolas Vaicbourdt
(Université de Paris 1, Université de Cergy-Pontoise)
"Atlanticism as a Construction of the Cold War"
6:00 PM, Saturday, 2 October 2010
http://www.coldwarcultures.org/