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Regular version of the site
Bachelor 2020/2021

Rethinking the Cold War

Type: Elective course (History)
Area of studies: History
Delivered by: Department of History
When: 4 year, 3 module
Mode of studies: offline
Instructors: Kirill Chunikhin, Elena Kochetkova
Language: English
ECTS credits: 4
Contact hours: 60

Course Syllabus

Abstract

This network course examines the Cold War, commonly treated as a period of rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States. Considering a global context East-West context, we will explore the ideological conflict of communism/socialism and capitalism from late 1940s to the early 1990s. The course introduces cultural and technological dimensions of the Cold War which, as we will see, were not entirely subordinate to the political and diplomatic history of the period. This is a network course with Indiana University. Seminars will take place on zoom, and some topics will be discussed with American students. In order to complete the course successfully, students will have to prepare and present a research project on the Cold War together with students from Indiana.
Learning Objectives

Learning Objectives

  • While focusing on the origins, major episodes and results of the Cold War, we will analyze recently published and declassified historical documents. This will allow discussing both traditional and novel interpretations of the Cold War from diverse and competing perspectives. Approaching the Cold War globally, we will reveal its multiple aspects from conflicts to various forms of cooperation. This will help us to acknowledge both the barriers and the bridges which the Cold War produced. Therefore, the course will overcome the dominant traditional interpretation of the Cold War as of an exclusively political conflict of two superpowers. Uncovering cultural dimensions of the Cold War, we will examine complex interactions of states, institutions, and independent actors. In doing so, we will discuss such themes as the Iron Curtain and its symbolic meanings; modernity and the Cold War; economic competition and the great divergence of the 20th century; decolonization and technological aid to the Third World; confrontation and cooperation in science, technology and culture; technology transfers and encounters of “small” actors; imagining the other; global environmentalism; globalization and confrontation; and legacy of Cold War thinking in post-Cold War world. Upon completion of the course, students will have a firm knowledge of Cold War dimensions, chronology, and historiography.
Expected Learning Outcomes

Expected Learning Outcomes

  • Distinguish between different perspectives by drawing on their knowledge of the discipline
  • Practice a range of research skills and scientific methods for studying history
  • Demonstrate a wide range of generic skills, including skills in communication, information processing, teamwork, critical and creative thinking, computing independent learning
Course Contents

Course Contents

  • Global Inequalities and Economic Competition
  • Cold War Basics: Who Started the Cold War?
  • Cold War Ideologies
  • Modernity and the Cold War
  • Domestic Fronts of Cultural Cold War
  • Technopolitics and the Cold War
  • Cold War Engagements: Transnational Contacts during the Thaw
  • Poetics of Atom
  • Hot Art during the Cold War
Assessment Elements

Assessment Elements

  • non-blocking Attendance and participation
  • non-blocking Final project
Interim Assessment

Interim Assessment

  • Interim assessment (3 module)
    0.4 * Attendance and participation + 0.6 * Final project
Bibliography

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

  • Bresselau von Bressensdorf, A., Ostermann, C., & Seefried, E. (2017). West Germany, the Global South and the Cold War. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=1639785
  • Farbøl, R. (2015). Commemoration of a cold war: the politics of history and heritage at Cold War memory sites in Denmark. Cold War History, 15(4), 471–490. https://doi.org/10.1080/14682745.2015.1028532
  • Friedman, J. S. (2015). Shadow Cold War : The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=nlebk&AN=978177
  • HILGER, A. (2019). The Global Cold War and Its Legacies. Kritika: Explorations in Russian & Eurasian History, 20(1), 208–218. https://doi.org/10.1353/kri.2019.0014

Recommended Additional Bibliography

  • Krige, J., & Wang, J. (2015). Nation, Knowledge, and Imagined Futures: Science, Technology, and Nation-Building, Post-1945. History & Technology, 31(3), 171–179. https://doi.org/10.1080/07341512.2015.1126022
  • Sarantakes, N. E., & Westad, O. A. (2019). The Cold War: A World History. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsbas&AN=edsbas.A214A659
  • 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