UCL Americas Research Network 2024 Conference – Historical Roots, Modern Realities: Nationalism Across the Americas

Since the end of the Cold War, its imagery, atmosphere, and music have been repeatedly appropriated and reappropriated within contemporary popular culture. More than thirty years after the Berlin Wall fell, these images continue to appeal to generations with no memory of the original tensions of the time. From the early Cold War imagery of games such as the Fallout series, or the mid-1980s backdrop of Soviet infiltration in Stranger Things, visual culture, music, and ideas from the period are constantly recycled in popular culture. These images are often linked to fears of nuclear destruction or disturbing post-apocalyptic settings, while also recalling nostalgic and often patriotic images of a lost world of the West. With the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine and heightened fear of nuclear war, these images are being appropriated and applied in new ways online and in popular entertainment. This conference invites participants to examine this theme and to explore […]