The 1950s: Cold War Culture and the Birth of the Cool

The 1950s: Cold War Culture and the Birth of the Cool is a Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies class taught by Karen Koehler, Rebecca Miller and Michele Hardesty.

Course Description
This multidisciplinary course is designed for students in their third semester, or in Division II, who are interested in studying the cultural history of the U.S. in the 1950s from several perspectives, while simultaneously developing a substantial, independent research paper. Throughout all components of the course, we will examine the sites and citations of mid-twentieth century modernity, in artistic developments such as jazz improvisation, beat poetry, happenings, rock and roll, gesture painting, and skyscraper modernism. We will examine the literature, popular culture, music, art and architecture of the 1950s against the backdrop of the atom bomb, McCarthyism, postwar Marxism, suburbanization, the creation of artificial intelligence, the discovery of DNA, civil rights, ethnic assimilation, existentialism, and other transformations of the postwar period. From "I Love Lucy" to "Rebel Without a Cause", Allen Ginsberg to Hannah Arendt, Mickey Katz to John Cage, Jackson Pollock to Charles and Ray Eames the contradictions and complexities of the 1950s have come to define modern American life. Lectures, films and discussions will be linked with a writing colloquium. In addition to the lectures, students will attend a weekly discussion section and film/television screening. '''All students must first register for an additional course: one of the HACU 241 Independent Writing Seminars. Students waitlisted for HACU 241 will be able and required to register for HACU 240 when a space becomes available.''' Not for distribution credit or first year students.