Looking Over Our Shoulder: The Cold War and Civil Rights in the United States

Cover of pamphlet "House Un-American Activities Committee: Bulwark of Segregation" by Anne Braden

This blog post is most of the exhibit case text from “The Cold War and Civil Rights in the United States,” part of the Special Collections Research Center’s “Looking Over our Shoulder: the Cold War in American Culture” exhibit, on display through January 2022. In the aftermath of World War Continue Reading

Looking Over our Shoulder: Art and Entertainment During the Cold War

State department letter to Arena Stage

This post is part of a series pertaining to SCRC’s current exhibition, Looking Over Our Shoulder: The Cold War in American Culture. Through the Cold War years, artists working in a variety of mediums in both the United States and the Soviet Union used their work to challenge the narrative Continue Reading

New Exhibition in SCRC – Looking Over Our Shoulder: The Cold War in American Culture

Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, I was extremely conscious of the fact that my country was locked in a contentious rivalry with the U.S.S.R., China, East Germany, Cuba, and the other, in my father’s words, “Godless communist” countries.  This struggle seemed to span all facets of life on Continue Reading

Marchives Madness

  It is that time of year and SCRC is having another Marchives Madness contest. Our current exhibition is called “Showing Us Our Own Face”: Performing Arts and the Human Experience. All of the items have been digitized to replicate the physical exhibit as shown. To view all the items Continue Reading

Shattering Stereotypes Instead of Glass: Opera and “Showing Us Our Own Face”

To many 21st century Americans, opera might conjure images of women in horned helmets belting out screechy songs in incomprehensible languages., and shattering panes of glass in the process. This stereotype has its origins in the German composer Richard Wagner’s operas with stories based in Norse mythology, and it is Continue Reading