COLD WAR CULTURE
Almost twenty years have passed since the end of the Cold War. This geopolitical cleavage which defined the second half of the 20th century was not only a period of fierce competition between two military superpowers, but it also engendered specific ways of thinking, feeling and acting for millions of people on both sides of the Iron Curtain. On the one hand, the military rivalry had promoted the vision that casts the world into competing binaries of good and evil. On the other hand, it generated popular resistance and subversion of the official propaganda, creating anti-war movements, counter-cultural trends in music, theater and art, thereby creating a space for alternative thinking.
The Havighurst Center will consider these cultural reflections of the Cold War era as well as the remnants of the Cold War culture and thinking today as part of its focus on the Cold War beginning Fall 2007. The Annual Young Researchers Conference, the Colloquia Series and various invited guest lecturers throughout the year will consider such topics as popular resistance and maintaining personal autonomy under repressive political regimes, responses to political rituals and propaganda, everyday life under the Cold War, the reinvention of history and building memories of the Cold War, the reflections of the Cold War thinking and practices in today's world.