The Cultural Cold War: Voices From Below

The Cold War was marked by ongoing rivalry between the United States of America and the Soviet Union, though its hot wars were fought across the decolonizing world. Placing literary and aesthetic cultures at the center of Cold War battles, this course introduces Cold War cultural interventions in Asia, Africa, and Latin America and how they shaped popular understandings of literary autonomy, freedom of speech, ideology, and propaganda. Through sampling declassified documents from CIA archives, little magazines, cartoons, films, novels, and short stories, students will learn how the Cold War generated competing approaches to literature and art.