Program

NOTE VENUE CHANGE FOR KEYNOTE SPEECHES

A New Insurgency: The Port Huron Statement in Its Time and Ours

Wednesday, October 31

VENUE CHANGE - Auditorium B, Angell Hall

7:30 pm

Welcome: E. Royster Harper, University of Michigan Vice President for Student Affairs

Keynote Address: Ruth Rosen, "Refugees from the Fifties," Introduced by Regina Morantz-Sanchez

Thursday, November 1
All panels in the Michigan Union

9:00-10:00 AM - Anderson Room

A Conversation on the Founding of SDS (moderator, Frank Joyce, founder, People Against Racism, with SDS founders Al Haber, Dick Flacks, Mickey Flacks, Bob Ross)

10:00 AM-Noon - Pendleton Room

Plenary Session: The Long Left and Social Movements from the 1950s to the 1960s

Chair: Charles Bright

    • Christopher Phelps, "From Old Left to New Left: Reconsiderations"
    • Aldon Morris, "The Port Huron Statement: Black Protest and Social Science Influences"
    • Marian Mollin, "Radical Pacifism in the Long 1950s: Forging New Forms of Protest and Dissent"
    • Nikhil Pal Singh, "Decolonization and American Power"

12:00 noon-1:00 PM

Break

1:00-3:00 PM

Session: Consciousness and the New Left

Panel A 
Intellectual Influences on the New Left  (Pendleton)

Chair: Angela Dillard

  • Casey N. Blake, "Liberation Now: Radical Humanism and the Postwar Left"
  • Ronald Aronson, "Philosophical Sources of the New Left: Marcuse, Sartre, Camus"
  • Paul Kramer, "Decolonizing U.S. International History: The New Left School, Historical Knowledge and American Power"
  • Barbara Ransby, "Ella Baker and Participatory Democracy"

Panel B
The Sensibility of New Radicals  (Anderson)

Chair: Elizabeth Hinton

  • Marge Piercy, "If poems can be about butterflies, why not about class?"
  • Kevin Gaines, "Music and Black Internationalism"
  • Robert Genter, "Participatory Arts as Participatory Democracy: The American Avant-Garde in the 1950s and 1960s"
  • Brandi Hughes, "Marching Saints and the 'New Community'"

3:15-5:15 PM

Session: Connections and Contradictions in the Making of the New Left

Panel A
Living Up (or Not) to Principles of Equality (Pendleton)

Chair: Scott Kurashige

  • Martha Prescod Noonan, "Peace and Justice: Experiencing the Sixties Through SDS and SNCC"
  • Daryl Maeda, "Before the Birth of Asian American: Asian Americans and the New Left"
  • Alice Echols, "Personal Politics and Women's Liberation: The Case of Shulamith Firestone"
  • Kevin Mumford, "Subversive Perversion: Notes on James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, and Bayard Rustin"

Panel B
A Movement of Movements (Anderson)

Chair: Sherie Randolph

  • Kim Moody, "Labor & SDS: The Weakest Link?"
  • Stephen Ward, "Black Power: A New Insurgency? Detroit, Ann Arbor, and Movement Making in the Early 1960s"
  • Sonia S. Lee, "Building a Consciousness of Resistance: Puerto Ricans' Shifting Racial and Ethnic Identities, 1960-65"
  • Michael Szalay, "Naming that System"

6:00-7:00 PM - Pendleton Room

Special Session: UM Students Discuss the Meaning of The Port Huron Statement Today

Chairs: Sian Dowis and Helen Fox

Thursday, November 1

VENUE CHANGE - East Hall, 1324 Main Floor

7:30 pm

Keynote Address: Tom Hayden, "The Future of Participatory Democracy," Introduced by Terry McDonald (link to view a video of this talk)

Friday, November 2
All panels in the Michigan Union, Pendleton and Anderson Rooms

9:00 -10:30 AM - Anderson Room

Women of Port Huron: Reflections on SDS and Change with SDS founders Leni Wildflower (moderator), Casey Hayden, Maria Varela, Barbara Haber, Sharon Jeffrey Lehrer, and Dorothy Burlage

11:00 AM-1:00 PM

Session: Comparative New Lefts

Panel A
Transatlantic New Lefts (Pendleton)

Chair: Geoff Eley

  • Sheila Rowbotham, "Women's Liberation in Britain and the New Left"
  • Michael Vester, "The German New Left and Participatory Democracy: Its Impact on Social, Cultural and Political Change"
  • Rita Chin, "European New Lefts, Global Connections, and the Problem of Difference"

Panel B
Hemispheric New Lefts (Anderson)

Chair: Richard Turits

  • Paul Hebert, "'Thought is Action for Us': Lloyd Best, New World, and the West Indian Post-Colonial Left"
  • Victoria Langland, "University Students, the 'New' Lefts, and the Transnational Experiences of 1968 in Brazil"
  • Louise Walker, "New Left and Class Politics in Mexico"
  • Devyn Benson, "African American Tourists and Afro-Cuban Realities, 1959-1961"

1:00-2:00 PM

Forum: Open Mic

Chair: Martin Murray

2:00-4:00 PM

Session: The New Left In the World

Panel A
Colonial Situations: Radicals Responding to the U.S. as a Colonial Power  (Pendelton)

Chair: Anthony Mora

  • Andrea Friedman,"The Empire at Home: Radical Pacifism and Puerto Rico in the 1950s"
  • Ramón Gutiérrez, "The Religious Foundation of Reies López Tijerina’s Activism"
  • Gloria House, "SNCC, Black Nationalism and International Consciousness"
  • Paul Chaat Smith, "New Indians in the New Frontier"

Panel B
The New Left in the Global Cold War (Anderson)

Chair: Penny Von Eschen

  • Marilyn Young, "The Beginning of the End of the Cold War in the Academy"
  • Immanuel Wallerstein, "1968 and the Pan-African World"
  • Richard Mann, "On the UM Teach-In, 1965"
  • Todd Gitlin, "The Unmentionable: The Bomb and Mass Violence"

4:15-6:15 PM - Pendleton Room

Plenary Session: New Insurgencies Then and Now

Chair: Peter Linebaugh

  • Dick Flacks, "Participatory Democracy as Vision and Practice"
  • Sarah Leonard, "Activism and Spectacle--Attitudes Toward Organizing"
  • Marina Sitrin, "Historical Movements Reinventing Democracy, from Greece and Spain to Occupy!"
  • Maria Cotera, "Teaching and Learning about Radical Politics Through Digital Media"
  • Brandon Mitchell, "Radical Politics, Strategy and Goals"
  • Mari Jo Buhle, "Women and the Wisconsin Uprising"
  • Paul Buhle, "The Wisconsin Uprising and the Progressive Legacy"

6:30-7:30 PM - Anderson Room

Special Session: University and Community Activists Discuss the Relevance of the 1960s New Left to Today's Movements