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WiSe 14/15: American Culture after World War II

Frank Kelleter

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Having emerged from World War II as a world power, the United States faced numerous problems of cultural self-definition in the second half of the 20th century. Together with an ideology of international leadership, the Cold War produced new anxieties about America's social identity and its changed position in the world. Developments and crises discussed in this lecture course include the advent of a postindustrial economic order, suburbanization, the decline of New Deal liberalism, the entangled rise of cultural radicalism on the left and right. In the early 21st century, many of the attendant challenges to cultural self-identification have been radicalized under the conditions of military hegemony, globalized capitalism, corporate anti-statism, and potentially catastrophic ecological transformations. Altogether, the lecture course focuses on select phases and moments of cultural production between 1945 and 2014, when American novels and films, TV shows and songs defined the global state of art in their respective fields. This has been one of the most innovative but also one of the most nervous periods in American cultural history, equally playful and belligerent, hilarious and outrageous. It gave us the Beat Movement, the 1960s counterculture, PopArt, the New Hollywood, the blockbuster movie, postmodernism, identity politics, neoliberalism, meritocratic extremism, various golden ages of television, transmedia franchises, and the internet. The lecture course serves as "Grundlagenvorlesung" of Culture-Module C in the M.A. program. Registration: all participants must be registered via Blackboard and Campus Management before the first session. If you cannot register online, or if you would like to participate, but cannot attend the first session, please contact Prof. Kelleter before the beginning of the term. Students can take this lecture course in conjunction with the seminar "Media, Aesthetics, Culture (1945-2014)" (same room, immediately after the lecture). close