Winning Women’s Hearts and Minds

Beschrijving

Winning 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 \

Beschrijving

Throughout the Cold War, Soviet citizens had limited access to US life and culture. Amerika, a glossy Russian-language magazine similar to Life, provided a rare exception. Produced by the United States Information Agency (USIA), America’s first peacetime propaganda organization, Amerika was used to influence the Soviet public and convince women in particular that an American-style consumer culture and conservative gender norms could better their lives. Winning Women’s Hearts and Minds relies on USIA archives, issues of Amerika, and American women’s magazines such as the Ladies’ Home Journal to show how, during the postwar period, USIA officials deployed idealized images of American women as happy, fulfilled, and feminine wives, mothers, and homemakers.

This study analyses how Amerika was used to appeal to Sovietwomen. Portrayed in the US media as \