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Module convenor: Dr Sophie Joscelyne

Outline:Ìý

This module explores the role of ideas and intellectuals in US foreign policy during the Cold War, interrogating the connection between ideas and action. It takes an expansive, non-traditional approach to intellectual history, and looks at the diverse shapers of US foreign policy both inside and outside government.ÌýÌý

Week 1 addresses the questions: ‘what is intellectual history?’ and ‘who is a foreign policy intellectual?’ and introduces the Cold War conflict. Next, we will examine the foundational Cold War ideas of containment, totalitarianism, and nuclear strategy. As the module progresses, we will assess how gender and race have structured intellectual engagement with US Cold War foreign policy. For example, we will reconsider containment theory by investigating policymakers’ concerns about masculinity and the nuclear family. In later weeks, the module will analyse how architects and critics of US policy responded to decolonisation, and investigate the importance of human rights in the later Cold War. We will encounter canonical Cold War thinkers, such as George Kennan and Hannah Arendt, but also those who have received less attention in this context – for example, Merze Tate, Eldridge Cleaver, and Jeane Kirkpatrick.ÌýThe overarching aim of this module is to illuminate the relationship between ideas and policymaking, and to understand how Cold War ideas had real impact on real people.

Assessment:

Forms of assessment vary from module to module and between academic years.Ìý Please email the Teaching Administration Team onÌýia-programmes@ucl.ac.ukÌýfor further information.

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