Course description
This interdisciplinary class uses the year 1968 to explore the intersection of memory, popular culture, art, history, philosophy, and radical politics. Students will explore a variety of narratives to consider one of the most eventful years of the 1960s and how it is remembered today. This course begins with the ‘Tet offensive’ in Vietnam, an event that shocked the American public and signalled the beginning of the end for America’s war in Vietnam. The course will investigate some of the main historical events, philosophical thought, and art movements which informed and embodied the revolution of 1968 in Paris, Berkley and beyond. Critical questions discussed include the relationship between freedom and determinism, imagination and language, self and society, popular culture and politics. Students will consider how these events have been remembered and chronicled by reading excerpts of autobiographies and other narratives to gain insight into the political, social and cultural changes of the 1960s. Students will also be introduced to iconic film and music that explore revolutionary ideas of personal and societal transformation.
We will focus on how and why 1968 provoked international political and social unrest by considering turmoil in the United States, Northern Ireland/Britain and Czechoslovakia. This will be done by addressing the Black Civil Rights movement and anti-Vietnam protests in the United States, the campaign for Civil Rights and outbreak of ‘the Troubles’ in Northern Ireland and the attempt by Czechoslovakia to embrace political reform and ‘socialism with a human face’ behind the Cold War Iron Curtain. Students will read autobiography and commentary by figures including Tim O’Brien, Bernadette Devlin, Angela Davis and Vaclav Havel. Other readings will be drawn from other sources including: Robert V. Daniels, Year of the Heroic Guerrilla: World Revolution and Counterrevolution in 1968 (New York, 1989) and Ingo Cornils and Sarah Waters (eds.), Memories of 1968: International Perspectives (Oxford and New York, 2010).

All students will be required to work with a partner or in teams with colleagues throughout the semester. All are expected to engage in weekly discussions and contribute regularly to a class blog. The course website is an essential resource that contains additional readings and other material and must be consulted frequently. Students will be evaluated by the exams, class participation and contribution to the class blog. There will be a mid-term worth (30%) and final exam worth (40%) of the final grade. Weekly contributions to the class blog and participation in discussions will make up the remaining grade (30%). Readings will be drawn from syllabus below and from the bibliography at the end of this document as the semester progresses.

The course will enable students to examine closely a variety of sources and to use those sources to interpret the past and explain change over time.

Syllabus

1) Week 1
Introduction to the course, Why 1968? Why memory?
Lecture: the Cold War In Asia, film clips addressing America’s War in Vietnam.
Homework due next week: review website; watch Apocalypse Now; (excerpt) read excerpt of a soldier’s narrative: Tim O’Brien’s The Things they Carried, contribute to class blog

2) Week 2:
Lecture/discussion: Historical context and representations of America’s War in Vietnam
Discussion: film and popular culture/autobiography Apocalypse Now/The Things They Carried
Homework to be determined by next week’s field trip. Contribute to course blog.

3) Week 3
Field trip to Venice.
Homework for next week: select readings from Jean-Paul Sartre, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Simone de Beauvoir (see website for details). Contribute to course blog.

4) Week 4
Lecture: Student unrest: The ‘Paris Revolt’ and Chicago’s 1968 Democratic National Convention, ‘The Whole World is Watching’
Discussion: Bendit, Simone de Beauvoir and popular protest in Paris and Chicago.
Homework for next week: readings including excerpts The Beatles and 1960’s Britain and lyrics of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. Contribute to course blog.

5) Week 5
Guest lecture, radical politics and student protest in 1960s Italy.
Discussion/listening, music and lyrics of 1968 (Beatles, Dylan, Cohen)
Homework for next week: Readings from Herbert Marcuse, ‘Essay on Liberation’, selections from Beneath the Paving Stones and Protest: The  Aesthetics of Revolution. Contribute to course blog.

6) Week 6
Philosophies of refusal, protest art, 1968 protests and riots.
Lecture/discussion: Herbert Marcuse, ‘Essay on Liberation’, selections from Beneath the Paving Stones and Protest: The Aesthetics of Revolution
Homework for next week: Reading on Civil Rights and Black Power.
Angela Davis autobiography, contribute to course blog

Week 7:
Lecture and discussion: Civil Rights and Black Power
Homework for next week: selections from Foreign Correspondent- A memoir by H.D.S. Greenway; film Vietnam, a television history. Contribute to course blog.

Week 8
Discussion: Covering/remembering War: A correspondent recalls reporting from Vietnam
Lecture: From Civil Rights to Armalites, the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’.
For next week read excerpts, Savage, The BBC’s Irish Troubles and Bernadette Devlin, The Price of my Soul. Contribute to course blog.

Week 9
Covering/remembering War, journalists reporting from the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’
Lecture: Life behind the Cold War’s Iron Curtain
Homework for next week: Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless. Contribute to course blog.

Week 10
Remembering the Prague Spring: Czechoslovakia in 1968, Socialism with a human Face?
Discussion Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless.
Selected readings from Psychedelic Art and Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind. Contribute to course blog.

Week 11
Discussion/listening: psychedelic Art and Music
Looking back, protest music of the Woodstock era, an exploration of poetry and lyrics.
Contribute to course blog.

Week 12
Student team presentations:‘remembering 1968’, through music and art.

Bibliography and resources
_1968: Power to the Imagination
_50 Years After Prague Spring, Lessons on Freedom (and a Broken Spirit)
_50 Years Later, Troubles Still Cast ‘Huge Shadow’ Over Northern Ireland – The New York Times
_Angela Davis, ‘If They Come in the Morning’
_Aquarius Rising – Jackson Lears
_Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1968
_Death of the Author: Roland Barthes
_Essay on Liberation: Herbert Marcuse
_Existentialism is a Humanism: Jean-Paul Sartre
_FILM: ‘A Bout De Souffle’ – Jean-Luc Godard
_Film: ‘Apocalypse Now’ – Francis Ford Coppola
_FILM: ‘Bob Dylan: Don’t Look Back’ – D.A. Pannebaker
_FILM: ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ – Arthur Penn
_FILM: ‘High School 1968’
_FILM: ‘The Battle of Algiers’ – Pontecorvo
_FILM: Blow-Up by Michelangelo Antonioni
_FILM: Jean-Luc Godard, ‘Breathless’ (A bout de Souffle)
_FLIM: ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ – Stanley Kubrick
_Foreign Correspondent: A Memoir – H.D.S. Greenway
_Foucault Chapter from ‘Wake of the Imagination’
_Gilles Deleuze: ‘May ’68 Did Not Take Place’
_Hell Sucks – Michael Herr, Esquire Excerpt
_Herbert Marcuse, from ‘Modern Movements in European Philosophy’ – Richard Kearney
_Important Artworks of 1968
_Interview with Sartre: May 20, 1968
_Interview: ‘How We Made Steppenwolf’s Born to Be Wild,’ The Guardian
_Julian Bourg, ‘From Revolution to Ethics: May 1968,’ Second Edition
_Kiss the Sky: Psychedelic Posters of the 60s
_Michael Pollan, ‘How to Change Your Mind’ – Ch 3, part 2, ‘The Crack up’ and ‘Coda’
_Michael Pollan, ‘How to Change Your Mind’ – Full Text
_Movie Poster for the film The Trip, 1968. ©Tadanori Yoko
_Murrary Littlejohn: From the Summer of Love to Revolution 1968 and beyond
_Murray LittleJohn: When Music Mattered
_MUSIC: “Give Peace a Chance” – John Lennon, 1968
_MUSIC: “Revolution” – The Beatles, 1968
_MUSIC: “Somethings in the Air” – Thunderclap Newman, 1969
_MUSIC: Altamont Speedway Free Festival – Music, Murder and Anarchy, December 1969
_MUSIC: “A Change is Gonna Come” – Sam Cooke, 1964
_MUSIC: “All Along the Watchtower” – Bob Dylan, 1968
_MUSIC: “All Along the Watchtower” – Jimi Hendrix’s version, 1968
_MUSIC: “All Your Need is Love” – Beatles, 1967
● MUSIC: “Chicago” – Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, 1968
● MUSIC: “Like a Rolling Stone” – Bob Dylan, 1965
● MUSIC: “Masters of War” – Bob Dylan, 1963
● MUSIC: “Ohio” – Neil Young, 1969
● MUSIC: “Story of Isaac” – Leonard Cohen, 1968
● MUSIC: “The Times They Are a-Changin’” – Bob Dylan, 1963
● MUSIC: Beatlemania, 1964
● MUSIC: Born to Be Wild” – Steppenwolf, 1968
● MUSIC: Woodstock Music and Art Fair – 3 Days of Love, Peace and Music, August 1969
● October 1968: The Birth of the Northern Ireland Troubles? – BBC News
● Power Up: A Short Essay on Sister Corita
● Protest Poster Examples
● Protest. The Aesthetics of Resistance, eds. Rogger, Voegeli, Widmer. Zurich, 2018
● Psychedelic: Optical and Visionary Art since the 1960s (The MIT Press)
● Record Sleeve for Cream’s Disraeli Gears, 1967 ©Martin Sharp
● Review: The Beatles’ ‘White Album’
● Rights of Sacrifice: Strangers, Gods and Monsters – Richard Kearney
● Ryan Walsh. Astral Weeks : A Secret History of 1968. Penguin, 2018
● Simone de Beauvoir: ‘The Ethics of Ambiguity’
● Simone de Beauvoir: ‘The Second Sex’
● Steven Watson. Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties. Pantheon, 2003.
● Stills from Yellow Submarine, 1969. ©Heinz Edelmann
● Striking back Against Racist Violence in the East End of London, 1968–1970
● The Black Power Mixtape
● The Society of the Spectacle: Guy Debord
● The Whole Earth Catalogue
● The whole world is watching: How the 1968 Chicago ‘police riot’ shocked America and divided the nation’ – The Guardian
● The whole world watched: 50 years after the 1968 Chicago convention – Chicago Sun Times
● Theatricum Philosophicum(On Warhol and Pop Art): Michael Foucault
● This is not a Pipe: Michel Foucault
● U.S. General Considered Nuclear Response in Vietnam War, Cables Show – The New York Times
● We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965-1985, A Sourcebook

Last updated: February 14, 2024