Lone Star Cold War Group (Texas State University)

Location:
Texas State University
601 University Drive
San Marcos
TX 78666
USA

Contact:
Dr. Elizabeth Bishop
eb26[at]txstate.edu

https://www.liberalarts.txstate.edu/

Description: 

Texas State University is a doctoral-granting, student-centered public postsecondary educational institution. The U.S. Department of Education has granted Texas State University-San Marcos official recognition as a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI). At Texas State, the Lone Star Cold War Group (LSCWG) promotes innovative teaching and research regarding the Cold War. In addition to military and strategic dimensions of this period's history, members of the group address social and cultural developments during this key period. In 2016, Texas State University's Common Experience theme, "A Century of Conflict," addressed the Cold War, acknowledging that these decades witnessed complex and multifaceted developments in peoples' imaginative and material lives.

Cold War Interests: 

| ARCHIVES AND LIBRARIES

Texas State University's "Study in America" program at the U.S National Archive's facility in College Park MD has provided undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to advance their own research on the Cold War. Moreover, students regularly publish research reports pertaining to the period in the Texas State Undergraduate Research Journal (TXSTUR).

Texas State University's Alkek Library holds a collection of more than 1.5 million printed volumes with particular collection strengths in twentieth century literature and the global Cold War. The library's collection of research databases regarding this era is exceptional in the State of Texas.

| UNIVERSITY RESEARCH

Ideology and Propaganda

College of Liberal Arts Dean, Dr. Mary Brennan, regularly teaches a graduate seminar on "Modern American History/Cold War." She is also the author of "Wives, Mothers, and the Red Menace. Conservative Women and the Crusade against Communism"  (University Press of Colorado 2008).

Dr. Nancy Berlage from the Department of History at Texas State University was Assistant Editor on the 21-volume Papers of the 34th President of the United States, Dwight David Eisenhower (1953-1961).

In 2008, Texas State Campus Radio KTSW addressed in its program "Cold War Kids" the social guidance film known as "Duck and Cover" (1951) by the US-Federal Government's Civil Defense branch. The film, frequently characterized as propaganda, channeled a growing panic about an atomic attack as it had been launched shortly after the Soviet Union began nuclear testing.

Culture and Society

Dr. Valentina Glajar at Texas State's Department of World Languages sponsored a roundtable discussion on "Cold War Spy Stories from the Eastern Bloc" in October 2017. The result is a co-edited volume  with the same title which had been published in August 2019 at Potomac Books.

Also, Jazz became an instrument of global diplomacy. For instance, in 1956 the US State Department created the Jazz Ambassadors program. Such and other research stories on Texas musicians are published in the Journal of Texas Music History, edited by Dr. Jason Mellard at the History Department's Center for Texas Music History.

Politics and Diplomacy

Understanding that the Cold War's strategic geographies linger as nostalgia in the rule-systems of the hyperreal, at Texas State's Department of English, Dr. Kathleen McClancy contributed "The Wasteland of the Real: Nostalgia and Simulacra in Fallout" to Game Studies, the International Journal of Computer Game Research (2018).

During the 1950s and 1960s, global networks of top secret mobile nuclear launch sites and foreign military bases were distributed around the world and across both the U.S.S.R and in every corner of the U.S. Also at the Department of History, Dr. Ellen Tillman teaches "Military History of the United States," addressing U.S. military history from the American Revolution through the Cold War.

The Cold War split the Middle East between a Sunni-majority Arab Republic of Egypt (ruled by military officers, aligned with the U.S.S.R.) and a Shi'i majority Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq (ruled by a king, aligned with the U.S.). At the History Department, Dr. Elizabeth Bishop regularly publishes research reports on this regional struggle. Notre Dame University's Center for the Study of Religion and Society awarded Dr. Bishop a curriculum development grant (2018) in support of the graduate seminar on the "Global Cold War."