This course will serve as an introduction to the current confrontation between the USA and Russia, a familiar Cold War foe. What we witness in politics--America's incessant conversation about the "menacing Kremlin"--is not new, and as our investigation will show rhetoric and intensity of these confrontations between the USA and the USSR/Russia for the American side have been imagined largely in Hollywood and developed in popular American/Western culture in the past century. Although “The Cold War” officially ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, images, beliefs, and ways of thinking developed during its heyday continue to dominate the way Americans see and think about the country that they perceive as its main rival on the international scene. Through weekly lectures, readings, discussions, and film screenings we will focus on the complex interrelations between culture and politics in American literature, cinema, sports, music and through other pop-culture manifestations as well as the uncanny hold that this Cold War-era “other” continues to exert on our collective mentality.