This course connects Postwar American culture to the birth and global dissemination of “youth culture” across Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Covering roughly two decades from the beginning of the Cold War to the revolutions of 1968, it investigates the transnational significance of figures such as Holden Caulfield, James Dean, and Little Richard; social types such as the rebel, the hipster, and the hippie; social movements like the New Left, the Black Panthers, and the Women’s Movement; aesthetic movements such as Jazz, Rock ‘N’ Roll, and Psych–Rock, and New Wave Cinema; and social and political practices like the road trip, drug experimentation, backpacking, as well as different varieties of protest and anti–disciplinary action. We will consider youth’s relationship to and co-development with new forms of media and communication technology. We will address youth in relation to new conceptions of the body and sexuality as well as to changes in the structure and culture of the university and higher education. Students will conduct original archival research in our library’s special collections on political art, Ann Arbor’s New Left newspapers, as well as the papers of Michigan alum Tom Hayden.

Literary and Filmic texts may include:

Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar (1963)

Jack Kerouac On The Road (1957)

E.L. Doctorow The Book of Daniel (1971)

JD Salinger The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

Valerie Solanas The Scum Manifesto (1967)

Francois Truffaut 400 Blows

Stanley Kubrick Lolita

Jean Luc Godard Masculin/Feminin

Nickolas Ray Rebel Without a Cause