CFP for ACLA 2020 Seminar: "Cold War Nostalgias: East and West"

Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy Announcement
Location
United States
Subject Fields
American History / Studies, British History / Studies, Economic History / Studies, Film and Film History, Popular Culture Studies

We are inviting participants in an ACLA seminar focused on Cold War Nostalgia in film and television.
This seminar seeks to explore the reemergence of the Cold War as a topic of global popular interest 30 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain. We aim to place this discussion in the context provided by previous studies of post-communist nostalgia, and seek a multidirectional, transnational approach to the phenomenon. Memory, in a Foucauldian reading, can be a political force, a form of subjugated knowledge, but also a site of potential opposition and resistance, vulnerable to manipulation. The new popularity of the topic in Hollywood (from TV shows like The Americans to block-buster films like, Bridge of Spies (2015), Hail, Caesar! (2016), Atomic Blonde (2017),The Shape of Water (2017), Red Sparrow (2018) and Creed II (2019) coincides with a rise in nationalist discourse and with new debates around the idea of democratic socialism in the US. 

We invite papers exploring recent film and television representations of the Cold War in North America and Europe that highlight the complex legacy of the conflict on both sides of the Atlantic. Particularly encouraged are papers focusing on the former Eastern bloc, in an effort to challenge the still-dominant Hollywood metanarrative. 

For more information on the conference, on the seminar format, or to submit a paper proposal, go here. The deadline for submitting a paper proposal is September 22.

Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy and Oana Popescu-Sandu

 

Contact Information

Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy, Associate Teaching Professor, Department of Global and Intercultural Studies, Miami University, Ohio

Contact Email
godeano@miamioh.edu