Professor Ann Douglas on the Fifties

Kurt Andersen talks with Professor Ann Douglas about the art, music, and literature of the 1950s, and the decade’s enduring influence on American culture.

Douglas is the Parr Professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where her lectures on the culture of the 1950s are standing-room only. She is the author of the award-winning book Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s, and is currently completing a book on Hollywood during the years 1930-1960. Douglas is also working on a long-term project, If You Live, You Burn: Cold War Culture in the United States, 1939-1965.