
Cold War Narratives
American Culture in the 1950s
Andrea Carosso(Author)
Peter Lang Verlag
Published on 30. January 2013
Book
Paperback/Softback
222 pages
978-3-0343-1270-7 (ISBN)
Description
Cold War Narratives reveals the power that representations, understood as both cultural production and public discourse, have held in shaping the imaginaries of early Cold War America. By engaging conflicting accounts of the 1950s as either affirmations of a prosperous and confident nation (in TV shows, popular sociology, and advertising) or as critiques of a society in the throes of fear, rebelliousness, and inequality (in film, literature, and media), this study sheds new light on the ambivalent imaginaries of the American 1950s.
Pitting visions of the Red Scare and of nuclear proliferation against narratives of an upbeat nation, eager to suburbanize and to adopt the new ethics of televised consensus, Cold War Narratives illustrates how America's leading metaphors of conformity shaped problematic gender roles, domesticity and consumption in the 1950s. It also exposes how dissenting voices to the Cold War consensus converged around the affirmation of specific identitarian discourses, especially highlighting the agency of youth and of the rising civil rights movement, and the way in which these two entered into unprecedented dialog through new discursive formations such as beat culture and rock 'n' roll.
More details
Edition
New edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Lausanne
Switzerland
Target group
Interessierte an Amerika, amerikanischer Kultur
Edition type
New edition
Dimensions
Height: 225 mm
Width: 150 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
319 gr
ISBN-13
978-3-0343-1270-7 (9783034312707)
DOI
10.3726/978-3-0351-0515-5
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
01/2013
180th Edition
Peter Lang Verlag
€103.89
Available for download
Person
Andrea Carosso teaches North American Culture at the University of Torino, where he also directs the MA Program in American Studies. Over the years, his books have focused on critical theory and American modernist and post-modern fiction and aesthetics. More recently, he has published on urban cultures in the U.S. - especially on gated communities and themed environments - on American religion and on the British Invasion of American popular music. He is currently working on a book-length study of the contemporary U.S. South-West.
Content
Contents: America in the Cold War Years - The Affluent Society - Building the Suburban Nation - Projecting America Through Television - Gray-Flannel-Suit Nation - Beats, Rebels and the Other 1950s - Reshaping Race in America - Rock 'n' Roll's Fordist Counterimaginary.