Join us for a talk as part of the Department of History Speaker Series, “Winning Women’s Hearts and Minds: Selling Cold War Culture in the US and the USSR,” presented by Dr. Diana Cucuz of Toronto Metropolitan University and Brock University.
Thursday, November 14, 2024, 11:00am to 12:30pm
Sankey Chamber at Brock University
Register on ExperineceBU. For more information, visit ExperienceBU or contact Melissa Vanatte at mvanatte@brocku.ca.
Light refreshments will be served, and a discount code for ordering books will be available.
Co-sponsored by Department of Communication, Popular Culture, and Film; Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies; Ph.D. Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities.
Learn more about the presenter and event below:
During the early Cold War, the U.S. government utilized print culture, both at home and abroad, to deploy images of supposedly happy American women as feminine wives, mothers and homemakers living under a capitalistic consumer culture. Through magazines such as Amerika, distributed in the Soviet Union throughout the duration of the Cold War, this talk will demonstrate how this “polite propaganda” was used to convince Russian “babushkas” of the superiority of the American way of life and, in the process, undermine a Soviet regime that promoted “gender equality” in place of the “special status” of American women. More broadly, it will shed light on the significance of women, gender, and consumption to international politics. Analyzing the Cold War through this unique lens reveals a broader U.S. foreign policy approach that sought to gradually destabilize the Soviet government not just through political and military means, but also through cultural diplomacy.
Dr. Diana Cucuz is a historian of post-World War II (Cold War) American, women’s and cultural history, focusing particularly on the intersections of foreign and domestic politics. She is the author of Winning Women’s Hearts and Minds: Selling Cold War Culture in the US and the USSR (University of Toronto Press, 2023). She currently teaches at Toronto Metropolitan University and Brock University.
This event is part of 60 Research Talks at Brock, celebrating 60 years of impactful research at Brock University.