Episode Details

On this episode of American Prestige, Danny and Derek again chat with Penny Von Eschen, William R. Kennan Jr. professor of American studies and professor of history at UVA, about her book Paradoxes of Nostalgia: Cold War Triumphalism and Global Disorder since 1989. This second part of the conversation picks up with Cold War nostalgia in American pop culture, the 90s search for a new “bad guy” in places like DPRK/North Korea and the Balkans, the “kitschification” of the Cold War, ways this nostalgia manifested throughout the War on Terror, how U.S.-Russia relations were reshaped in the 1990s and 2000s, and the influences of this refracted view of the Cold War on the “New Cold War” dynamic we’re seeing today.