Cold War and the American Empire

Catalog description

The Cold War period has been defined by America's ideological conflict and proxy warfare with the Soviet Union. The tremendous cultural, social, economic, and political turmoil that resulted from this era, including such events as the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement, can still be felt throughout the globe today. In this course, students draw connections among contemporary issues and their foundations in the period between the end of World War II and the fall of the Soviet Union. Students explore how the essential nature of this conflict compares and contrasts to traditional conceptions of "war," examine to what extent the Cold War was representative of a paradigm shift in terms of foreign policy and military engagements, and investigate the general relationship between war and society in this period.