Conquering the Cosmos: The Art and Visual Culture of the Space Race

This course explores the history of the US/Soviet Space Race through the lens of art and visual culture. We seek to understand: What was the Space Race? How did it shape culture and geopolitics in the twentieth century? How did it change our broader understanding of what and who is in a universe? Each seminar meeting with center around a different chronological theme. We will begin with a prehistory of the Space Race, reading translated texts by Russian mathematician Konstantin Tsoilkovsky, the father of the idea of space flight, and the American astronomer Edwin Hubble. We will then move on to a discussion of the Space Race’s specific origins during the World War II era development (and deployment) of nuclear weapons by ally-turned-enemy states. Following this foundational
introduction, the rest of the course will be devoted to the study of the specific events and associated cultural phenomena that defined the space race: US and Soviet rocket mania, the release of Sputnik, Gagarin’s flight into space, Apollo 11, the space shuttle program, and the building of International Space Station “Mir.”