HIST3363

This course examines the origins, unfolding, and end of the Cold War, with emphasis on both geopolitical conflict and its social and cultural expressions. It begins with an examination of the ideological tensions between the USSR and USA and then turns to the end of European hegemony and de-colonization across Asia and Africa. It examines the expansion of the American empire and the appearance of new communist nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. While we will spend time on wars, insurgencies, and alliances, we will also examine how competing blocs and their members bound themselves through trade and economic interdependencies and how they represented themselves, their ideals, and the cold war itself in the sports, music, literature and film. The course ends with the collapse of the Soviet Union and a survey of Cold War traces in the fields of geopolitics and culture.