Contemporary History | Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines, March 25

Gregory Daddis

The Contemporary History Institute hosts Gregory Daddis discussing his fourth book, Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines, on March 25 from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m.

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Daddis is professor of history at San Diego State University, where he holds the USS Midway Chair in Modern U.S. Military History. Daddis joined SDSU after directing the M.A. program in War and Society Studies at Chapman University. Prior to that, he served as the Chief of the American History Division in the Department of History at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

A retired U.S. Army colonel, he deployed to both Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom. Daddis specializes in the history of the Vietnam Wars and the Cold War era and has authored five books, including Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines (2020) and Withdrawal: Reassessing America’s Final Years in Vietnam (2017). He also has published numerous journal articles and several op-ed pieces commenting on current military affairs, to include writings in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and National Interest magazine.

About Pulp Vietnam: Evaluating Cold War popular culture, Pulp Vietnam explores how men’s adventure magazines helped shape the attitudes of young, working-class Americans, the same men who fought and served in the long and bitter war in Vietnam. The “macho pulps” portrayed men courageously defeating their enemies in battle while women were reduced to sexual objects. The result was the crafting and dissemination of a particular version of martial masculinity that helped establish GIs’ expectations and perceptions of war in Vietnam. By examining the role that popular culture can play in normalizing wartime sexual violence and challenging readers to consider how American society should move beyond pulp conceptions of “normal” male behavior, Daddis convincingly argues that how we construct popular tales of masculinity matters in both peace and war.

This event is free and open to the public.