1968 is more than a year—it is the afterimage of a dream. For those who believed in that dream, not just the global political order but human nature itself was evolving into a new age of peace, love, and freedom for all, and at revolutionary speed. The discovery that human nature can be re-engineered into something more adventurous, creative, peaceful, and powerful than ever imagined before. This course invites students to evaluate this remarkable movement of self-reinvention through a selection of its cultural achievements, focusing on works produced in and around the pivotal year of 1968. This seminar is interdisciplinary in the sheer range of genres we’ll encounter, from avant-garde theatre to musicals to Hollywood and experimental films to popular music to novels to manifestos to philosophical and psychoanalytical treatises. Topics may include anarchism, radical second-wave feminism, Black Power, hippies, psychedelics and psychiatry, the sexual revolution, rock and roll, communes and community, mass media, and the Vietnam War/antiwar movement.

The focus of the course will be the question: What did this most (in)famous youth generation consider the purpose and the means of self-reinvention, and what of their lessons can be applied to our lives today? We will also ask: what does (or at least, did) it mean to compose literature amidst massive social upheaval? At no point will we seek to romanticize the artists, writers, thinkers, and movements we study. Instead, we’ll ask hard questions about how to measure their successes and failures, and about the impact they left on the United States today, an age that is remarkably different from their own.

Course Requirements:

Engaged and open-hearted discussion is required. Assignments will include discussion questions posted to Canvas before each class, two interpretive essays of course texts, and a longer final project that may be creative.