May 26th, 2014 - Diane P. Koenker, “Mad Men in Moscow: Sex and Style in Soviet Films of the 1960s” (Si-mian Lectures on Humanities No. 203)

Title: Mad Men in Moscow: Sex and Style in Soviet Films of the 1960s

Lecturer: Diane P. Koenker, Chair Professor of History, Professor of Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Center of Global Studies

Chairperson: LIU Chang (Professor, Department of History, East China Normal University)

Date: 3 pm, May 26th, 2014 (Monday)

Venue: Room 5303, Building of School of Humanities, Minhang Campus, ECNU

Sponsor: Si-mian Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities, ECNU

Abstract of the Lecture:

The era of the Cold War has returned to public consciousness, but not only because of a restoration of international tension between “Russia” and “the West.” The current revival in scholarly and popular interest in the Cold War derives much from the phenomenon of post-Communist nostalgia, particularly in the former Eastern Europe, and as seen on popular television in the United States in the award-winning series, Mad Men. The show’s retrospective emphasis on style over narrative provides an opportunity to re-examine the era of the Cold War - particularly the 1960s - in comparative terms. What did the 1960s look like from within Communist systems? We find some features similar to those in the West and others peculiar to the USSR. The talk explores through Soviet films of the 1960s the portrayal of a consumerist yet anguished world of sex, material goods, friendship, ambition, and nuclear fear. These Soviet films from the 1960s, when viewed today, evoke nostalgia for a time when the Soviet Union was still a land of possibility, a promised land of socialism, the last decade before the economy stalled and the leadership ossified.

Brief Introduction of the Lecturer：