University of Missouri, St. Louis IRL @ UMSL Theses Graduate Works 4-14-2016 Cultural Detente: John le Carré from the Cold to the Thaw Leah Nicole Huesing University of Missouri-St. Louis,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://irl.umsl.edu/thesis Recommended Citation Huesing, Leah Nicole, "Cultural Detente: John le Carré from the Cold to the Thaw" (2016). Theses. 168. http://irl.umsl.edu/thesis/168 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Works at IRL @ UMSL. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses by an authorized administrator of IRL @ UMSL. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Huesing 1 Cultural Détente: John le Carré from the Cold to the Thaw Leah Huesing B.A. History, Columbia College, 2009 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Missouri-St. Louis in partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in History May, 2016 Advisory Committee Peter Acsay, Ph. D Chairperson Minsoo Kang, Ph.D. Carlos Schwantes, Ph.D. Huesing 2 Abstract British spy fiction author John le Carré inspired Cultural Détente, a movement in American popular culture which banished the simplicities of the 1950’s and replaced it with a relaxation of tensions from 1960-1965. Cultural Détente manifested from within Western liberal, democratic society after the strict conformities of the 1950s. After the dissipation of McCarthyism and the anti-Communist crusaders, the public was ready to embrace a ‘thaw’ in tensions. Even with all of the evidence already in place, there has yet to be any historical evaluation of a 1960s Cultural Détente that anticipated and made possible the détente of Richard Nixon.