Russia and/in America
Since the dawn of the Cold War, U.S. popular culture has been saturated with narratives that pit a morally-righteous United States against a sinister, duplicitous Russia–a binary foundational to postwar American Studies. In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine–and the attacks on democracy and human rights that it entails–the image of a menacing Russian presence is once again salient. Rather than redeploying a Cold War logic designed to disavow the sordid histories of the United States, this panel asks how we might approach the intertwined histories of Russia and the U.S. as a way of strengthening our critique of the oppression and exploitation perpetuated by both nations.