Description
Book SynopsisWinning Women's Hearts and Minds focuses on women, gender, and the politics of selling US consumer culture and domesticity during the early Cold War through polite propaganda.
Trade Review“Cucuz makes outstanding use of archival materials in two presidential libraries, as well as State Department and USIA records held in the National Archives. On the U.S. side, her work deepens the intersecting historiographies of Cold War Studies, post-World War II cultural diplomacy, and American women’s history – literatures she engages with confidently throughout the study.” -- Roshanna P. Sylvester, University of Colorado Boulder *
The Russian Review *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Why Women, Cold War Cultural Diplomacy, and Amerika? Part One: Shaping Women, Gender, and the Communist Threat through the Ladies’ Home Journal 1. The “Modern Woman”: The “Special Privileges” of American Womanhood in the Ladies’ Home Journal 2. The “Babushka”: The “Special Hardships” of Russian Womanhood in the Ladies’ Home Journal Part Two: Selling Women, Gender, and Consumer Culture through Amerika 3. Selling the American Way Abroad: The Beginnings of Cold War Cultural Diplomacy in the Soviet Union 4. Modeling the American Dream: Fashion and Femininity in Amerika 5. Living the American Dream: The Happy Homemaker in Amerika 6. Amerika, the USSR, and a Woman’s Proper Place in the Sixties Conclusion: Assessing Amerika’s Effectiveness: Soviet Promises for the Future and Its Failures Bibliography
