Scottish Centre for War Studies and Conflict Archaeology

Doom Town, Las Vegas, and the Atomic Frontier of the 1950s

Professor John Wills (University of Kent)

17.15 - Monday, November 25th, 2024

Online: Please register using this form

 

Hosted by the 'Atoms and Archives' cross-college research grouping at the University of Glasgow, the Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies, and the Scottish Centre for War Studies and Conflict Archaeology.

 

Abstract: In the 1950s, Las Vegas thrived thanks to its new casinos and entertainment shows. It also strangely benefited from events 65 miles north at the newly created Nevada Test Site, where atmospheric atomic bomb tests drew widespread public attention. Tourists visited the new ‘Atomic City’ of Vegas to watch the bombs go off, none more so than two ‘open’ tests in 1953 and 1955 where live television crews captured Doom Town, a fake townsite, be utterly destroyed. This paper explores some of the ideas of frontiers, wastelands, fun and fear, on the specific atomic frontier of 1950’s Las Vegas, and how the atom collided with the roulette wheel in sin city.

 

Bio: John Wills is a Professor in Film & Media at the University of Kent. He is the author of seven books, his most recent with Esther Wright, entitled Red Dead Redemption: History, Myth and Violence in the Video Game West (University of Oklahoma Press, 2023). John is a former British Library Eccles Centre Visiting Fellow, British Academy grant holder, and a Leverhulme Research Fellow, currently completing a book project on Doom Town for the University Press of Kansas.

 

All welcome!

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First published: 21 November 2024