THE COLD WAR AS GLOBAL A CONFLICT

The Project questioned the usual chronology and geography of the Cold War as an East-West conflict that began with the end of World War II and ended in 1989. That interpretation does not provide a way of understanding decolonization, national liberation, social revolution and civil war, development and underdevelopment, and the racial and ethnic conflict seemingly endemic to the international system that followed the Cold War.

The project placed the multiple connections between the Cold War and the globalized present at the heart of its collective inquiry. Every aspect of the terms "Cold War" and "globalization" are open to question, starting with their assumed spatial and temporal dimensions, origins, objectives, and even protagonists.

In sum, over three years, ICAS considered the structures of power – intellectual, economic, social, political, religious, and cultural – as they have developed locally and globally from 1945 to the present.

The Cold War as Global Conflict Project was directed by Marilyn Young and co-directed by Allen Hunter. For the names of the Fellows, Project Advisory Committee and Funders click on the previous links.

Year 1 (2001-2002): War and Peace

The general theme for the first year was the nature of war and peace since 1945. In the shadow of the events of September 11th and since, the specific topics addressed were shaped by the presentations of the fellows in residence and at symposia and conferences organized by the Center. Topics included: Cold War periodization; the role of smaller powers in shaping the Cold War; empires and decolonization; ethnicity and changing forms of violence since the end of the Cold War; affective bases of support for wars of national liberation; terrorism; the political uses and abuses of science during the Cold War; the U.S. opening to China; forced population movement in the Greek Civil War; triumphalism in U.S. Cold War historiography; weapons of mass destruction in the post-Cold War era.

Year 2 (2002-2003): Everyday Life, Knowledge, Culture

The second year considered the realms of everyday social life, knowledge and culture during and since the Cold War. We will consider processes of and resistance to Americanization and Sovietization in various domains of daily life. Specific topics will include: the culture of late Stalinism; Soviet film and the Russian intelligentsia; Soviet films/Chinese audiences; sexual politics in the U.s Cold War novels; political uses of fear in the U.S., Chile, and the Soviet Union; architectures and the export of American architecture; social crises in post-Soviet Russia and Kazakhstan; Cold War domesticity and consumerism; security studies in South Africa; the role of race and oil politics in U.S.-Saudi relations; Japanese social sciences during the Cold War; TV in the early Cold War.

Year 3 (2003-2004): History, Governance, Alternatives

During the Cold War, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union sought to legitimate their own political orders by suppressing alternatives, albeit with differing degrees of success and through different means. The same period was also marked by the changing composition of the U.N., the organization of the movement of non-aligned countries, the articulation of international human rights as theory and practice, the growth of a wide variety of oppositional social movements across the political spectrum and the emergence of non-governmental agencies whose activities cut across the policies of nation-states. In its third and final year, the Project will focus on the histories and consequences of these socio-political processes during and after the Cold War. Comparative studies encouraged. Specifics topics could include: the political meanings and historiographic impact of post-Communist anti-communism; contestations over the politics of "development"; changes in the meaning and significance of state sovereignty; the history and uses of discourses on human rights and civil society; peace-keeping and humanitarian intevention; disarmament, nuclear proliferation, the world arms trade; sources and significance of current forms of violence; the "Americanization" of culture across the globe and the nature of "anti-Americanism", evolving interactions between migration, identity and citzenship; changing norms and practices of government secrecy, security, and surveillance; normative and empirical democratic theory and practice.

Several of ICAS weekly seminar presentations are available as working papers.

FELLOWS

2003-2004: History, Governance, Alternatives

Charles Bright, United States, (Fall 2003)
"Sovereign Republic/Global Empire: The American Nation in a Global Era"

Michael Geyer, United States, Visiting Scholar (Fall 2003)

Greg Grandin, NYU Faculty Fellow
"Anti-Americanism' and the Americas""

Sandra Halperin, United Kingdom
"Lectures on Development: The History of Industrial Capitalism Reconsidered"

Shireen Hassim, South Africa, Visiting Scholar (Spring 2004)

Young-sun Hong, United States
"The Third World in the Two Germanies: Race, Health, and the Construction of National Identity, 1950-1970"e;

Sean Jacobs, South Africa
"The Cold War, National Liberation, and Democratic Politics in South Africa: The Tradition of Chris Hani"

Dolores Janiewski, New Zealand (Fall 2003)
"Privatizing Imperialism: Neoliberalism, Christian Conservatism, and the Construction of a Cold War and Post-Cold War World Order"

Rebecca Karl, NYU Faculty Fellow
"The Asiatic Mode of Production, Transition, and Debates on Development in 1980s China"

Dan Link, NYU Dissertation Fellow
"Containment Politics: Liberal Anti-Communism in New York, 1944-1960"

Vania Markarian, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Uruguay, (Spring 2004)
"Transnational Human Rights Activism in Latin America: Re-Visiting the Political Order of the Cold War"

Tomaz Mastnak, Slovenia
"Civil Society Discourse in Eastern Europe"

Ayse Parla, NYU Dissertation Fellow
"Migration, Memory, and Belonging among the Turks of Bulgaria"

Dan Prosterman, NYU Dissertation Fellow, (Fall 2003)
"Under the Cloak of Patriotism: The Proportional Representation Campaigns in New York City, 1936-1947"

Darini Rajasingham, Sri Lanka, Fulbright Scholar (Fall 2003)

Suzanna Reiss, NYU Dissertation Fellow
"Policing for Profit: U.S. Imperalism and the International Drug Economy"

Ron Robin, Israel, Visiting Scholar, (Spring 2004)

Kristin Ross, NYU Faculty Fellow
"European Noir: Crime and History in Recent Detective Fiction"

Stephen Smith, United Kingdom (Spring 2004)
"Struggling with 'Superstitution': Communism versus Popular Culture in Russia (1917-1964) and China"

Julie Stewart, NYU Dissertation Fellow
"Globalization Grounded: Land Disputes and Agrarian Reform in Post- Bellum Guatemala"

Roxanne Varzi, Woodrow Wilson Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow
"Visionary Terrains of Post-Revoluution Iran"

Nira Wickramasinghe, Sri Lanka, Fulbright Scholar

2002-2003: Everyday Life, Knowledge, Culture

Koray Caliskan, NYU Dissertation Fellow
"Locating the Global Market in the Age of Neo-Liberal Reforms: Cotton Trade and Production in Egypt and Turkey"

Tina Chen, Canada
"Soviet Film, Chinese Political Culture, and Everyday Internationalism in the 1950s"

Evgeny Dobrenko, United Kingdom
"Winning the War/Losing the Peace (Late Stalinism: A Cultural History. Part II.)"

Fumiko Fujita, Japan, Visiting Scholar

Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi, United States, Visiting Scholar

Kimberly Gilmore, NYU Dissertation Fellow (Spring 2003)
"States of Incarceration: Prisoners' Rights and US Prison Expansion After World War II"

Alyosha Goldstein, NYU Dissertation Fellow (Fall 2002)
"Dependencies of Liberal Empire: The 'Problem of Poverty' from the Cold War to Community Action"

Rob Kroes, Amsterdam, Visiting Scholar (Spring 2003)

Sergei Kapterev, NYU Dissertation Fellow
"Soviet Cinema and the Russian Intelligentsia in the Post-Stalin Era (1953-1968): Representational Strategies, Intellectual Contexts, Images of Social, Cultural and National Identity"

William Marotti, Woodrow Wilson Postdoctoral Fellow, United States
"Politics and Culture in Postwar Japan: The Artistic Avant-Garde, 1958-1972"

Anna McCarthy, NYU Faculty Fellow
"Television Commercials and Economic Education in Fordist America"

Mary Nolan, NYU Faculty Fellow
"Cold War Domesticity: Consumption, Gender and Politics on the Home Front"

Joan Ockman, United States
"Modern Architecture with a Minimum of Dissent"

Toshio Ochi, Japan
"'Realism' in the Theory of Political Culture: A Comparative Study of Japanese and American Political Science in the Cold War"

Jakob Rigi, United Kingdom/Sweden (Spring 2003)
"Post-Soviet Crisis of Sociality and Meaning: A Comparative Study of Russia and Kazakhstan"

Priscilla Roberts, Hong Kong, Visiting Scholar (April 2003)

Corey Robin, United States (Fall 2002)
"The Three Faces of Fear"

Nicole Sackley, United States, Visiting Scholar

Laura Tanenbaum, NYU Dissertation Fellow
"The Sex Bomb: Sexual Politics and the Historical Novel in the Postwar United States"

Peter Vale, South Africa (Fall 2002)
"South Africa, Security and Cold War Narratives"

Roxanne Varzi, Woodrow Wilson Postdoctoral Fellow, United States
"Visionary Terrains of Post-Revolution Iran"

Robert Vitalis, United States
"America's Kingdom: Everyday Life on the Cold War Oil Frontier"

2001-2002: War and Peace: 1945-2000

Csaba Bekes, Hungary
"The Role of Eastern Europe in the Cold War"

Laura Bier, NYU, Mellon Dissertation Fellow
"Making Women into Citizens: Gender, Citizenship and State-Building During the Nasser Period, 1952-1970"

Phillip Deery, Australia
"The Clandestine Cold War: Britain, Southeast Asia and Covert Propaganda" (Spring 2002)

Mario Del Pero, Italy, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
"Fighting the Cold War: United States Policies in the Mediterranean Theater During the 1970s. The Case of Italy, Portugal, and Spain"

Ana Dopico, NYU Faculty Fellow
"From Cold War to Drug War: Permanent Revolution, Permanent Warfare and the Politics of Containment in Latin America"

Carolyn Eisenberg, United States
"Nixon and Kissinger: The Vietnam War and the Origins of Detente" (Fall 2001)

Irene Gendzier, United States, (November 2001)

Dayo Gore, NYU Dissertation Fellow
"'A Candle in a Gale Wind:' Black Women Radicals and Post-World War II U.S. Politics. 1930-1960"

William Marotti, United States, Woodrow Wilson Foundation Fellow
"Politics and Culture in Postwar Japan: Akesegawa Genpei and the Artistic Avant-Garde, 1958-1970",

Michael Nest, NYU, Dissertation Fellow
"The Evolution of State-Society Relations in a Fragmented State: The Case of the Democratic Republic of Congo"

John Prados, United States
"CIA Covert Operations and Indigenous Nationalisms"

Darini Rajasingham, Sri Lanka
"Homo Ethnicus is Dead; Long Live Homo Oeconomicus: Globalization of Conflict and the Culture Question in World Development Policy"

Olga Sezneva, NYU, Mellon Dissertation Fellow
"Living in the Russian Present with the German Past: History and Architecture in the Construction of Place"

Polymeris Voglis, Greece
"Forced Population Movements During the Greek Civil War in the Context of the Cold War, 1945-1960" (Spring 2002)

Odd Arne Westad, Great Britain, (Spring 2002)

Elisabeth Wood, NYU Faculty Fellow
"The Dynamics of Civil Conflicts: Emergence, Persistence and Resolution in Comparative Perspective"

PROJECT ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Itty Abraham,
Social Science Research Council

Ruth Ben-Ghiat,
Italian, NYU

Jorge Castańeda,
Politics and Center for Latin American/Caribbean Studies, NYU

Bruce Cumings,
History, University of Chicago

Lloyd Gardner,
History, Rutgers University

Irene Gendzier,
Political Science, Boston University

Michael Gomez,
History, NYU

Greg Grandin,
History, NYU

Robert Latham,
Social Science Research Council

Zachary Lockman,
History, NYU

Mark Crispin Miller,
Culture and Communication, NYU

Mary Nolan,
History, NYU

Emily Rosenberg,
History, Macalester College

Ellen Schrecker,
History, Yeshiva University

Elisabeth Wood,
Politics, NYU

FUNDERS

This Project has received generous funding from New York University, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and the International Visitors Program at NYU.

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