Prof. Mary C. Neuburger will give a talk on the topic: "The Cold War Cigarette: Tobacco Advertising and East-West Encounters" on 7 July 2016 (Thursday) at 17:30h at CAS conference hall.

Abstract:

This talk explores the evolution of cigarette marketing in Bulgaria and the USA in the context of contrasting systemic restraints and objectives. In particular I explore how notions of the "good life" versus the "common good" informed varied discourses and practices related to both smoking and advertising. It explores the ways in which marketing of cigarettes in communist Bulgaria gained momentum in the same period that cigarette advertising within the USA was severely curtailed.

Dr. Mary Neuburger is a Professor of history, the Director of the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (CREEES), and the Chair of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at the University of Texas of Austin. She is the author of The Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria (Cornell 2004), and Balkan Smoke: Tobacco and the Making of Modern Bulgaria (Cornell, 2012). Dr. Neuburger is also the co-editor with Paulina Bren of Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe (Oxford, 2012) and has authored numerous articles on Bulgarian history on topics ranging from gender and material culture, to ethnic identity, and consumption. She is currently co-editor with Dr. Richard Evans of the Journal of Contemporary History.