1960s in Global Perspective

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

From Berkeley to Mexico City, from Paris to Prague, and from Trento to Copenhagen, the years around 1968 witnessed a moment of political and cultural upheaval that challenged the authority of governments, institutions, and ways of thought. The events associated with the ‘long 1960s’ transcended the realm of conventional politics: long hair, colorful and exotic clothing, and ostentatiously casual behavior became distinctive marks of a ‘restless youth’. Contemporary observers already acknowledged that this was a global phenomenon, and in recent years historians have begun to study ‘the sixties’ predominantly through a transnational lens. The ‘transnational turn’ in history writing is itself closely intertwined with some of the legacies of the 1960s, a by-product of the rising ‘global consciousness’ that emerged in the decade’s wake. This graduate seminar, co-taught by Prof. Kazin and Prof. von der Goltz, will engage with the most recent literature on the 1960s to study the entanglements between movements in different countries (the New Left, the counter-culture, and conservatism amongst them) and to trace how ideas travelled from one country or continent to another. Students will gain a strong grasp of how the 1960s played out in different national contexts and an in-depth conceptual and methodological understanding of transnational history.