Women, Power, and Intrigue in Cold-War Berlin

The Center for the Study of Women and Society and Women Writing Women's Lives present the Dorothy O. Helly Works-In-Progress Lecture "From Martha Graham to Eleanor Lansing Dulles: Women, Power, and Intrigue in Cold-War Berlin" by Victoria Phillips.

Victoria Phillips will introduce her work on a biography of Eleanor Lansing Dulles, a forgotten principle American participant in the rebuilding of war-torn Berlin. Dulles joined with Martha Graham to “fight the Kremlin” with culture in the Cold War hotspot, Berlin, 1957. Unlike, Graham, who proclaimed, “Center stage is wherever I am,” Dulles hid in plain sight in the U.S. State Department’s man’s world of mid-20th Century Cold War intrigue, intent on keeping an “invisible position.” Victoria Phillips will discuss finding memos obscured in international archives that Dulles wrote under assumed names, and concealed in “Top Secret” files penciled in tiny print, EDL; for Eleanor Lansing, “Eyes Only Dulles.” Phillips posits that Dulles has not yet been written about because this power-driven woman succeeded in masking her ambition and contributions, a necessity during 1950s Cold War culture.