Socialist World, “Third World,” Media Worlds: An Exploratory Workshop

This workshop aims to explore the socialist world’s cultural outreach in Asia, Africa, and Latin America during the Cold War as one facet in their complex experiences of late twentieth century modernization.  Generalizations about socialist culture (or indeed western cultural imperialism) in Asia, Africa, and Latin America too often rely on a false universal: a “Third World” denuded of its huge diversity.  What we need instead is in-depth knowledge of contexts and a solid understanding of all sides in cultural exchange.  Yet historians of the socialist bloc, China, and the Global South tend to work in isolation from one another, and in isolation from media historians and scholars in anthropology and cultural studies.

This workshop, funded by the AHRC Socialism Goes Global project and co-hosted by the School of Oriental & African Studies, is an effort to begin bridging these divides.

Please see the provisional program here:

Workshop Program.docx

Workshop Program.docx