Course Description
Graduate research seminar, focused on the development and writing of a significant work of original historical research touching, in some way, on the Cold War. The topic can be interpreted broadly in theme and geography.
Athena Title
The Cold War
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student learning Outcomes
- Students will learn to assess the potential and the shortcomings of a source base.
- Students will learn to design a research question with the care and precision required of professional work.
- Students will learn to organize and write on a deadline, as well as the essential skills of collaboration and generous peer review.
Topical Outline
- Origins of the Cold War- 19th century through the Russian Revolution
- Wilson, Lenin, and the "Third World"
- American anti-communism and the first Red Scare
- Great Depression and Stalin’s Great Break
- Transformations of WWII
- China and the Communist Bloc
- The Nuclear Age and the Nuclear Age
- The Science-State and the Military-Industrial Complex
- The Cold War university
- McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare
- Decolonization and the Cold War
- Cold War in the Global South
- 1954, 1968, and the international communist movement
- Détente
- Cold War Culture—Spies, Sport, Propaganda
- Decline of the Soviet Bloc
- “The End of History” and the post-Cold War settlement
