Hello Rosie! Your proposal offers an interesting perspective on the Cold War, Eastern Europe and the collapse of the USSR which I am eager to read more about. Your focus on cultural transnational exchanges and how they interacted in Eastern Europe with political contexts through the example of rock music is particularly interesting.
I enjoyed the nuanced approach you’re taking, by studying how both individuals but also states gave meaning and tried to mobilize rock music in different ways and contexts. It resonated a lot with the content of Fidelis’ Imagining the World from Behind the Iron Curtain : Youth and the Global sixties in Poland, which we had the opportunity to explore during the book speed dating session. In this book, she highlighted how communist states and in this case Poland, were directly involved in the opening of their societies to western culture although it was highly regulated but also reappropriated and pushed further by individuals. I look forward to seeing how you will explore those ambivalent movements as well as how rock music and the imaginary associated with it was instrumentalized but also constructed differently depending on the actors and the context.
I feel like your project is also a great opportunity to explore individual testimonies and practice micro history, notably by highlighting the meaning individuals gave to rock music and how those individual meanings sometimes participated in community-building and notably the creation of transnational communities, but also how they were shaped and interacted with socio-cultural contexts.
As I am not entirely familiar with the subject, I was also wondering if cultural exchanges regarding rock music only involved exchanges between western countries and eastern European countries or if there were also exchanges with other non-western countries since Fidelis in her book mentions how a cultural imaginary was also built around “global south” countries and notes forms of cultural exchanges. It might be interesting to look into it.
Overall your proposal is really clear and well-thought and I look forward to hearing more about your findings in your presentation!