Atomic Culture: From Chornobyl to Hiroshima and Fukushima

Course Number: 82-196

What happens when a nuclear catastrophe becomes culture, memory and popular entertainment? Exploring nuclear warfare, weapons testing, industrial and reactor accidents and the cultural legacies of atomic technology, this course takes students from Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Japan), the Marshall Islands (Pacific Ocean) and Semipalatinsk (Kazakhstan) to Kyshtym (Russia), Windscale (United Kingdom), Three-Mile Island (United States), Chornobyl (Ukraine), Goiânia (Brazil) and Fukushima (Japan).

Through literature, oral histories, documentary and feature films, television, animation, graphic novels, photography, visual art, music, graffiti, video games, memorials and popular culture, students will examine how different societies experience, remember and represent nuclear tragedies and their environmental, health, social, psychological and political consequences.

We will explore how cultural representations shape public knowledge, challenge official narratives and transform historical tragedies into collective memories, cultural symbols and even popular entertainment. How do societies cope with nuclear trauma, displacement, secrecy and environmental injustice? How do science, technology and culture influence our understanding of environmental disasters? What happens when sites of nuclear catastrophe become tourist destinations, fictional worlds or spaces of artistic expression? Students will engage with these questions through comparative cultural analysis and an original creative project contributing to a collaborative Atomic Culture Memory Archive.

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Degree: Undergraduate
Concentration: Russian Studies
Semester(s): Spring
Units: 9
Prerequisite(s): None