PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT IS CANCELED!
THE GLOBAL HISTORY OF SPORT IN THE COLD WAR
In association with the Cold War International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC, a new collaborative project has been launched on the cultural, social and political significance of sport between the end of World War II and the fall of Communism. Via a series of workshops and meetings, which will run between 2014 and 2016, the project aims to produce an edited volume, a series of journal special issues, a special edition of the Cold War International History Project Bulletin featuring primary documents in English translation, and a Critical Oral History Conference on the 1980 and 1984 Olympics. Prospective hosts include: the Jordan Center for Advanced Russian Studies, New York University, the German Historical Institute in Moscow, the Centre for Contemporary Historical Research (Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung) in Potsdam, and the University of Cambridge.
Sport during the Cold War was uniquely positioned between high politics, diplomacy and popular culture. It offers an ideal prism onto issues of hard and soft power and the ways in which body culture and the media interacted at times of ideological tension. It was also a truly global phenomenon, bringing Africa, Asia, and Latin America onto the same stage as the superpowers and their European surrogates. This project seeks to illuminate all realms and aspects of sport in the Cold War, from its beginning up to 1991 and including its long aftermath. We are particularly interested in hearing from colleagues, young and old, who are working with new primary sources. The USSR played a central role in world sport during this period, and we are eager to think about how their efforts connected to international and domestic politics.
PROJECT DIRECTORS
Robert Edelman (University of California, San Diego); Christian Ostermann (Woodrow Wilson Centre, Washington); Christopher Young (University of Cambridge, UK).
STEERING COMMITTEE
Jutta Braun (Zentrum deutsche Sportgeschichte / Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung, Potsdam); James Hershberg (George Washington University); Vince Hunt (Smooth Operations Radio); Yanni Kotsonis (New York University); Nikolaus Katzer (German Historical Institute, Moscow); James Person (Woodrow Wilson Centre, Washington), Sergey Radchenko (University of Nottingham, Ningbo campus) and Mikhail Prozumenshikov (Russian State Archive of Contemporary History).
Robert Edelman is a professor of Russian history and the history of sport at the University of California, San Diego, where he has been teaching since 1972, when he received his doctorate from Columbia University. He has also taught at UCLA. He was a former sports-writer and radio announcer. He has consulted on documentaries for HBO, PBS, ESPN, and CBS at the 1998 Olympic Winter Games. He lives in Solana Beach with three children, two dogs and one wife. Professor Edelman received the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Grant in 2007-2008.
The purpose of this colloquium is to discuss a multi-year research project in which the Jordan Center will participate. Copies of the project proposal will be distributed in advance, and we invite questions, discussion, ideas, suggestions, reactions, complaints, brain storms and other interventions from faculty and students in all disciplines.
NYU's Russian and Slavic Studies Colloquium is an interdisciplinary forum that serves to introduce and discuss the most recent work of a range of scholars from within the Slavic field.The purpose of this colloquium is to discuss a multi-year research project in which the Jordan Center will participate. Copies of the project proposal will be distributed in advance, and we invite questions, discussion, ideas, suggestions, reactions, complaints, brain storms and other interventions from faculty and students in all disciplines.
