The Space Race: A Cultural History in the Cold War

Course focus and approach:
This course aims to study the historical roots of nowadays cultural dimension of the Space Race in the Cold War (1947 - 1991), with a special focus on the period between the Sputnik (1957) to the Apollo-Soyuz programme (1975), from the destalinization to the détente. We will frame the cultural aspects of the Space Race within the broader political, economic, scientific and technological context.

Course description:
Include here a brief description of the course contents (about 100 words)
Throughout the study of the public sphere, the pop-culture and the mass media, students will learn the complex dimension of the Space Race and of its centrality in the Cold War dynamics. We will study how the mass media shaped the public imagination in the USA and in USSR during the Space Race. The course will analyse how the mythologies of the ‘frontier’ both in the USA and in Soviet Union were extended to the interplanetary space. We will study how fears and desires were projected in the Space Race. We will see how each side conceived of the other both as an enemy and as a collaborator, how the Space Race was marketed in terms of competition and collaboration at the same time, becoming with the Apollo-Soyuz project the symbol of the déténte. Throughout the reading of magazines, newspapers, as well as the analysis of TV shows, novels and science fiction movies, we will see how the Space Race influenced the daily life in the USA and in USSR, as well as gender, sex and ethnic relations. We will focus on memoirs of astronauts, engineers, politicians and policymakers and of other actors to see how the main characters of the story perceived the history of the Space Race and were perceived in the public sphere. The study of the cultural industry will allow us to unveil certain features of the making of what Dwight Eisenhower defined the military- industrial complex. We will also have a quick view to nowadays and future perspectives of the space conquest.

Learning objectives:
At th- will have acquired an in-depth knowledge of the cultural history of the Space Race in the context of the Cold War
- will have developed the ability of gathering information and of structuring it from primary
sources between the 1950s and the 1990s
- will have acquired critical skills needed to analyze the cultural history of the Cold War
Course workload: Describe the type of workload here: readings, lectures, exams, field
studies…

Teaching methodology:
The course is designed in an inter-active way. Students will work in class on primary sources: speeches of the main actors, newspapers and magazines articles, tv shows and movies, but also science fiction novels and cartoons. Occasionally, (non-technical) archival documents, such as NASA reports, will also be discussed. Emphasis will be placed both on the visual and on the material culture. Earth and Moon globes, toys and other gadgets of the Space Race time will be studied as forms of representation and circulation of knowledge. Four movies will be watched and students will have to critically work on them through the critical lens of what they have found in the primary and secondary sources studied.

Assessment criteria:
30% Class activities (discussion of the written texts, documentaries and objects presented both in small groups and in plenary session, oral presentations, etc)
40% (10% each) 4 short essays on the movies watched in class
30% Final written papere end of this course the students:

Weekly schedule:
- WEEK 1
Session 1
Course description. Syllabus, assessment and readings. Introduction to the course requirements and method of assessment.
Session2
‘From Stettin to Trieste an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent’...the origin of the Cold War and the scientific and technological confrontation between the two Blocs
Required readings:
Arthur Schlesinger Jr. 1967. Origins of the Cold War. Foreign Affairs 46(1): 22 - 52.
HOBSBAWM, Eric J. 1994. The Age of Extremes 1914 - 1991, London: Abacus, chapter 8 ‘Cold War’, pp. 225 - 56.
- WEEK 2
Session 1
The Atomic Age: Screening of the documentary ‘Atomic Café’ 1982
Session 2
Destination Moon’... Tintin, Von Braun, Tsiokolski: scientists and writers who dreamt of the Moon
Required readings:
Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin. Destination Moon. DuBois: Mammoth.
Hergé. The Adventures of Tintin. Explorers of the Moon. DuBois: Mammoth.
- WEEK 3
Session 1
The ‘Hidden Persuaders’: mass media and the consumer society in 1950s and 1960s America Required readings:
Packard, Vance. 1957 The Hidden Persuaders. New York: Ig Publishing, Chapter 13, ‘Cures for our Hidden Aversions,’ pp. 136 - 45.
COHEN, Lizabeth. 2003. A Consumer's Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America. New York, Vintage Books, a couple of chapters.
Session 2
The creation of the industrial-military complex
Required Readings:
LEDBETTER, James. 2011. Unwarranted influences: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the MilitaryIndustrial Complex. Yale: Yale University Press, pp.
THORPE, Rebecca U. 2014. The American Warfare State: The Domestic Politics of Military Spending. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, chapter 1 ‘introduction: Perpetuating the US Military Economy’ and chapter 2 ‘Presidential War Powers in Historical Perspective’, pp. 3 - 46.
- WEEK 4
Session 1
The Sputnik shock: Collaborating or competing?
Required Readings:
‘The Sputnik’, Time Magazine, Monday Oct. 14, 1957.
‘The satellite. Why Reds got it first,’ LIFE Magazine 21 Oct 1957
TEASEL, Muir-Harmony. 2020. Operation Moonglow. A Political History of The Project Apollo.
New York: Basic Books, chapter 2 ‘Sputnik and the Policy of Spaceflight, 1957,9 pp. 33 - 52.
Session 2
Laika's window’: the evolving human-animal relations in light of the experience of the first living beings in space
Required Readings:
CASWELL, K. 2018. Laika's Window: The Legacy of a Soviet Space Dog, San Antonio: Trinity University Press., chapter 3 ‘The Making of a Space Dog,’ pp. 99 - 132 and 6 ‘First around the Earth,’ pp. 196 - 226.
GEORGIOU, Constantine. 1963. Ham the Astrochimp. New York: American Book Company.
HILLIARD, Richard. 2007. Ham the Astrochimp. Honesdale: Boyds Mill Press.
A Happy end for Ham's First Flight, LIFE, 10 February 1961.
- WEEK 5
Session 1
‘Man in Space: Russia's Yuri Gagarin’ (title of Time Magazine). Astronauts as the new heroes
Required Readings:
‘The Cruise of the Vostok,’ Time Magazine, April 21. 1961
‘Science: Freedom's Flight,’ Time Magazine, Friday, May 12, 1961
Gerovitch, Slava. 2015. Soviet Space Mythologies: Public, Images, Private Memories, & the Making of a Cultural Identity, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, chapter 5 Humanmachine Issues, the Cosmonaut Profession and Competing Visions of Spaceflight, pp. 98 - 127.
Session 2
Space and the Soviet Imagination
Required readings:
SIDDIQI, Asif A. 2010. The Red Rocket's Glare: Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination 1857 - 1957, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, chapter 3 ‘Imaging the Cosmos’, pp. 74 - 113
- WEEK 6
Session 1
Screening of Solaris by Andrey Tarkovsky 1972
Session 2
Science fiction and the space race
Required readings fo rthe week:
MAJSOVA, Natalija. 2021. Soviet Science Fiction Cinema and the Space Age. Lenham: Lexington Books, chapter 2 ‘Aelita's Mark and the Many Faces of Utopia,’ pp. 26 - 56 and chapter 4 ‘The Space Age and Its Others: Soviet SF between Gagarin and Gorbachev,’ pp. 81 - 102.
- WEEK 7
Session 1
Screening of ‘Hidden Figures’
Session 2
The ‘Hidden Women’ and ‘the First Lady in Space’: the space race and the gender question in the 1950s and the 1960s
Required Readings:
TERESHKOVA, Valentina. 2015. Valentina Tereshkova, the First Lady of Space, in Her Own Words. Spacebusiness.com
BOOTHE LUCE, Claire ‘But some people simply never get the message,’ LIFE, 28 June 1963, pp. 31 - 3.
Griswold, Robert L. “Russian Blonde in Space” Soviet Women in the American Imagination 1950 - 65. Journal of Social History 45(4), pp. 881 - 907.
- WEEK 8
Session 1
NASA on the screen
required reading:
MEERMAN SCOTT, David - JUREK, Richard. 2014. Marketing the Moon: the Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program. Cambridge: MIT Press, ‘A Modern Day Columbia: Fiction Makes a Giant Leap,’ pp.1 - 34.
KAUFMANN, JAMES L. 1994. Selling Outer Space: Kennedy, the Media and Funding for Project Apollo, 1961 - 63. Tuscaloosa: Alabama University Press, chapter 4 ‘Life: NASA's Mouthpiece in the Popular Media, pp. 68 - 92.
Session 2
One small step for man, one giant leap for humanity’...the Apollo project
Required reading:
KAUFMANN, JAMES L. 1994. Selling Outer Space: Kennedy, the Media and Funding for Project Apollo, 1961 - 63. Tuscaloosa: Alabama University Press, chapter 1 ‘The Kennedy Administration's Lunar Campaign’ and 2 ‘The Kennedy Administration and the New Frontier,’
pp. 12 - 49
- WEEK 9
Session 1
Screening of Apollo 13 1995
Session 2
Selling the Moon
Required readings:
Allen, M. 2009. Life from the Moon: Film, Television and the Space Race. London: Tauris, chapter 8 ‘One Small Step for Man, One Giant leap for Propaganda- Apollo 11,’ and chapter 9 ‘Failure is nor an option, but was almost a reality - Apollo 12 - 14,’ pp. 141 - 174.
- WEEK 10
Session 1
The détente and the Apollo - Soyuz program.
Reading and class discussion:
SHER, Gerson S. 2019. From Pugwash to Putin: A Critical History of US-Soviet Scientific Cooperation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, chapter 1 ‘The Deep Cold Wat and the Exchange Program,’ pp. 10 - 30.
Session 2
Life on Mars’...the Space Race in the 21st century 1
Required readings:
WHITEHOUSE, David. 2020. Space 2069: After Apollo, Back to the Moon, To Mars, and Beyond. New York: Icon Books, a couple of chapters
A visit to the CosmoCaixa Planetarium will be organised Last revision: May 2022.
Required readings:
Course reading pack prepared by the instructor.
Gerovitch, Slava. 2015. Soviet Space Mythologies: Public, Images, Private Memories, & the Making of a Cultural Identity, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
TEASEL, Muir-Harmony. 2020. Operation Moonglow. A Political History of The Project Apollo. New York: Basic Books