Description:
This lecture will present an exploration of the rhetoric that accompanied the introduction of nuclear weapons to the American public in 1945-6. A survey of statements by a broad range of American social leaders will be examined and in the process we will begin to see a primary narrative about nuclear weapons and their significance begin to emerge. We will then trace that primary narrative through the early Cold War and see the role that such narratives have played both in politics and in popular culture.
Objective:
Students are encouraged to consider the role that narratives and images
have in shaping public (and their own) understanding of nuclear weapons.
Recommended Readings:
Henriksen, Margot. Dr. Strangelove's America: Society and Culture in the Atomic Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
Weart, Spencer. Nuclear Fear: A History of Images. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988. The Atomic Cafe. The Archive Project, 1982 (DVD).
Name: Robert JACOBS
Present Post and Title: Associate Professor, Hiroshima Peace Institute, Hiroshima City University.
Final Education: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Ph.D.
Specialized Field: American Cultural and Social History, History of Science and Technology,
Popular Culture Studies
Recent Publications:
*The Dragon's Tail: Americans Face the Atomic Age (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009), forthcoming
*Editor, Filling the Hole in the Future: Art and Popular Culture in Response to
the Atomic Bomb in the US and Japan (Lantham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009), forthcoming
I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago where I was taught to Duck and Cover
in my elementary school. I received a self-designed B.A. at the University
of Minnesota in Minneapolis. I did my graduate work in history at the University
of Illinois where I received both my masters and doctorate. Soon after
graduation I was appointed to my present position at the Hiroshima Peace
Institute. My personal interests include a long involvement in the organic
produce community in California, writing poetry and cooking.
