Tune in on Friday, March 6th at noon PT for our next Scholar Series webinar. Joanna Smolko will present research by coauthor Tim Smolko and herself on fallout shelters in American popular music from the 1960s. In the mid-1950s, the Cold War brought a frightening realization to Americans: war had come to their front door. The Russians’ hydrogen bombs and intercontinental ballistic missiles put the American family home on the front line.

Many people built fallout shelters and the popular songs written about them, though ranging from the humorous to the earnest, represent general skepticism from the American public. Most songs treated them as a joke, a place to make out with your “bombshell” girlfriend, or as a disruption to community through the exclusion of neighbors. This presentation explores popular songs such as Mike and Bernie Winters’ “Fallout Shelter,” Chris Cerf’s “Fallout Filly,” and Bob Dylan’s “Let Me Die in My Footsteps.”

Register here

Funded in part by a Public Participation Grant from the Washington State Department of Ecology.