The Racial Imaginary of the Cold War Kitchen: From Sokol'niki Park to Chicago's South Side(Re-Mapping the Transnational: A Dartmouth Series in American)

This book demonstrates the ways in which the kitchen--the centerpiece of domesticity and consumerism--was deployed as a recurring motif in the ideological and propaganda battles of the Cold War. Beginning with the famous Nixon-Khrushchev kitchen debate, Baldwin shows how Nixon turned the kitchen into a space of exception, while contemporary writers, artists, and activists depicted it as a site of cultural resistance. Focusing on a wide variety of literature and media from the United States and the Soviet Union, Baldwin reveals how the binary logic at work in Nixon's discourse--setting U.S. freedom against Soviet totalitarianism--erased the histories of slavery, gender subordination, colonialism, and racial genocide. The Racial Imaginary of the Cold War Kitchen treats the kitchen as symptomatic of these erasures, connecting issues of race, gender, and social difference across national boundaries. This rich and rewarding study--embracing the literature, film, and photography of the era--will appeal to a broad spectrum of scholars.

About the Author :
KATE A. BALDWIN is an associate professor of communication studies, rhetoric, and American studies at Northwestern University and the author of Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain.

Review :
"The Racial Imaginary of the Cold War Kitchen demonstrates that imaginaries are useful devices for questioning existing narratives and identifying new complexities."-- "Winterthur Portfolio" "In The Racial Imaginary of the Cold War Kitchen, absence is more important than presence."-- "Journal of American History" "[A] well-argued and engaging study . . . Baldwin has demonstrated significant ways to nudge the field of diplomatic history toward new and exciting directions. . . . The Racial Imaginary of the Cold War Kitchen: From Sokol'niki Park to Chicago's South Side may help to relieve the fears of those who continue to question whether cultural studies enriches diplomatic history or pulls it off course."-- "H-Net" "Baldwin's use of Soviet sources, including reactions to ANEM, literature and movies, household encyclopedias, and magazines is impressive and significant. . . . Baldwin has crafted a fascinating and insightful book that can be appreciated by scholars working in a variety of academic fields."-- "Russian Review"