Erik Scott
University of Kansas
Erik Scott is an historian of modern Russia, the Soviet Union, and the global Cold War at the University of Kansas. His first book, Familiar Strangers: The Georgian Diaspora and the Evolution of Soviet Empire was published by Oxford University Press in 2016, released in paperback the following year, and translated into Russian by Moscow’s New Literary Observer in 2019. The book received the Vice Chancellor for Research Book Publication Award, was an honorable mention for the Council for European Studies Book Award, and a finalist for both the Central Eurasian Studies Book Award and the Joseph Rothschild Prize in Nationalism and Ethnic Studies. His second book, Defectors: How the Illicit Flight of Soviet Citizens Built the Borders of the Cold War, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. He is a graduate of Brown University, and the University of California, Berkley.
Undergraduate Syllabus
Beyond the Iron Curtain
This course will transport you to a distinct time and place: the Cold War-era Soviet Union. Through readings, class discussions, activities, and writing assignments, you will examine a diverse array of Soviet perspectives on a global conflict that defined the second half of the twentieth century, one whose legacy continues to shape our world today. You will learn to critically engage historical arguments and to analyze beliefs, behaviors, and practices in their historical and cultural context by looking at a broad range of primary historical sources, including interviews, memoirs, declassified government documents, films, music, photographs, visual art, and a Soviet novel.
This course will give you a chance to take part in historical debates about the Cold War that resonate to this day, including: Who started the Cold War, and did anyone win it? Was it a time of relative peace or paranoia? How did the two sides view each other and did espionage help them to know each other better? How did people and culture sometimes cross the iron curtain? What is the legacy of the Cold War? In addition, by contrasting the Soviet experience of the Cold War with that of other societies, particularly the United States, and exploring the cross-cultural dialogue and frequent cross-cultural misunderstandings that characterized international relations in this period, you will be better prepared to understand and negotiate political and cultural differences in the contemporary world.