Jessica Douthwaite – författare

Between 1945 and 1962, a generation--too young to serve in the Second World War, yet too old to be baby boomers--grew up in the shadow of real war and the looming threat of a new, nuclear catastrophe. These young men and women reached adulthood at the precise moment that Britain's nuclear weapons, rooted in the context of the early Cold War, were deployed as deterrents. This experience shaped civilians' everyday lives in varied and surprising ways.Using original oral testimony and extensive archival research, A Nuclear Peace uncovers the Cold War experience of this woefully under-studied generation. Through an investigation into domestic life, civic organisations, and Cold War events, the book threads together a history of Cold War uncertainty from personal and global perspectives. In bringing cultural, social, and defence histories into conversation, it demonstrates that everyday life was connected to the international landscape through particularly British cultural and ideological expectations of domesticity, security, and morality. In each chapter, Jessica Douthwaite explores the historically contextual mood that contributed to British civilians' acceptance of the nuclear deterrent and perceptions of nuclear security. Topics include civil defence, anti-nuclear and pacifist campaigning, parenthood in the nuclear age, significant events such as the Berlin Airlift and Cuban Missile Crisis, and attitudes to nuclear science, nuclear testing, and radioactivity. The changing role and mechanisms of the press in a modernizing and globalizing media era permeate her historical interpretation.Ultimately, Douthwaite showcases the power of testimony, oral history methods, and memory studies to penetrate questions of emotion, experience, and cultures of conflict in the past and advocates for sensitive and nuanced approaches to historicizing civilian life. Official historians have shown that the authorities responsible for steering the course of the Cold War held sway to very British customs and values, A Nuclear Peace demonstrates that the civilians living through this transition were equally in thrall to the cultural traits that resulted in distinctly British security assumptions and expectations of citizenship in a nuclear age.

Cold War Museology is the first volume to bring together interdisciplinary and international contributions from leading practitioners and academics specialising in Cold War museology.Bringing the most recent historiography of the Cold War into conversation with museological theory and practice, chapters within the volume analyse the current condition of Cold War museology. By unpicking some of the unique challenges facing museum specialists dealing with the Cold War, this book takes a lead in developing the collection, display and interpretation of this history. The chapters question what makes a Cold War object; address the complexity of Cold War time; face up to questions of Cold War race, gender and imperialism; and reveal how to materialise the Cold War imaginary in museums. Most importantly perhaps, the volume demonstrates that, a consideration of the interconnecting forces of global twentieth-century history enables experts to add important complexity and nuance to the narratives with which they work and improve visitor understandings through innovative interpretations.Cold War Museology will encourage readers towards a more nuanced, holistic and inclusive approach to Cold War materiality in museums. It will be of great interest to academics, museum professionals and students engaged in the study of museums, heritage and the Cold War, as well as those with an interest in archaeology, media, culture and memory.

Cold War Museology is the first volume to bring together interdisciplinary and international contributions from leading practitioners and academics specialising in Cold War museology.Bringing the most recent historiography of the Cold War into conversation with museological theory and practice, chapters within the volume analyse the current condition of Cold War museology. By unpicking some of the unique challenges facing museum specialists dealing with the Cold War, this book takes a lead in developing the collection, display and interpretation of this history. The chapters question what makes a Cold War object; address the complexity of Cold War time; face up to questions of Cold War race, gender and imperialism; and reveal how to materialise the Cold War imaginary in museums. Most importantly perhaps, the volume demonstrates that, a consideration of the interconnecting forces of global twentieth-century history enables experts to add important complexity and nuance to the narratives with which they work and improve visitor understandings through innovative interpretations.Cold War Museology will encourage readers towards a more nuanced, holistic and inclusive approach to Cold War materiality in museums. It will be of great interest to academics, museum professionals and students engaged in the study of museums, heritage and the Cold War, as well as those with an interest in archaeology, media, culture and memory.