Dr. Günter Bischof

HIST 6501

Summer 2007

e-mail: gjbhi@mobiletel.com

tel: 280-3223

office hours: M W 1:30 – 2:30 (or by appointment)

The 1960s and the Crisis Year 1968:

Transnational Perspectives

This course will look at the turmoil of the 1960s as a crisis decade culminating in the “year of shocks” 1968 from a comparative international perspective. It will cover some of the major movements in the United States (youth cultures, civil rights, Vietnam War and anti-war) but also look at their significance in the world at large. The “protest culture” of the 1960s and the eruption of violent protests will be studied in their global context, how they radicalized and fed on each other. The significance of the 1960s in the trajectory of the post-World War II world will also be assessed by looking at text books.

Required Readings:

Jeremy Suri. Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente. Cambridge: Harvard UP Pbk. 2003.

Arthur Marwick. The Sixties: Cultural Transformation in Britain, France, Italy and the United States, c. 1958 - c. 1974 . Oxford: Oxford UP 1999

Mark Kurlansky. 1968: The Year That Rocked the World. New York: Ballantine Books 2004.

Jeremy Varon, Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies . Berkeley: University of California Press 2004

Mary Dudziak. Cold War Civil Rights: Race and Image of American Democracy. Princeton: Princeton UP 2002

Lewis l. Gould. 1968: The Election That Changed America (The American Way Series). Chicago: Ivan R. Dee 1993

Robert S. McNamara. In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. New York: Vintage PB 1999

Tom Wolfe. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. New York: Bantam Reprint 1999

Alexander Solzhenitsyn. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Transl. Ralph Parker. New York; Signet Classic 1998

DOCUMENTS

 
Grading Policy

Papers 2/3

Class discussion 1/3

Student Responsibilities

• Students will come to class prepared, eg. being able to discuss in detail the week’s assigned class readings
• Students will direct the discussion in one week’s sessions (they will prepare a one page list of questions on the major issues of the week’s readings for each session and hand it out as a discussion guideline to the rest of the students)

Attendance Policy

Students have to attend ALL classes; unexcused absences will result in one grade drop per unexcused absence; a class can only be excused by contacting the instructor in advance (phone or e-mail)

Academic integrity is fundamental to the process of learning and evaluating academic performance. Academic dishonesty will not be tolerated. Academic dishonesty includes, but is not limited to, the following: cheating, plagiarism (including copying work from the Internet!), tempering with academic records and examinations, falsifying identity, and being accessory to acts of academic dishonesty. Refer to the UNO Judicial Code for further information. The Code is available online at http://www.uno.edu/~stlf/p o licy%20Manual/judicial_code_pts.htm.

Students who qualify for services will receive the academic modifications for which they are legally entitled. It is the responsibility of the student to register with the Office of Disability Services (UC 260) each semester and follow their procedures for obtaining assistance.

Upon completing this course, students are expected to

• Know the basic outline and chronology of the international history of the 1960s, including a firm knowledge of the major movements and political events

• Demonstrate a sound comprehension of 1960s Cold War historical geography

• Understand the basic movement dynamics—the work of the principal movements and their leaders, the national traditions in which they emerged and their global interactions

• Grasp major historiographical controversies relating to the 1960s

• Grasp the role of the interaction between the superpowers and their respective empires in the international arena of the 1960s, as well as the subtle trajectories of their shifting power status in the world

• Place the 1960s movement cultures in their global transnational environment

• Investigate the role of violence in achieving the goals of states and movements

Weekly Meeting and Reading Schedule

Week I

Mo June 11 Introduction

Wed June 13 Transnational History – What is it?

READ: Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Suri, Power and Principle, pp. 1-43

Essays by Akria Iriye and Charles Bright/Michael Geyer in Thomas

Bender, ed. Rethinking American History in a Global Age (Berkeley 2002), 47-99

Week II The Beginning of an Era

Mo June 18 The Cold War and the late 1950s

Wed June 20 The Cold War and the early 1960s

READ: Marwick, The Sixties, pp. 3-193

Suri, Power and Principle, pp. 44-131

Week III The Civil Rights Movement

Mo June 25 Civil Rights and the Beginnings of Movement Cultures

Wed June 27 The Internationalization of Civil Rights

READ: Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights

Marwick, Sixties, 194-244

Week IV Vietnam

Mo July 2 Robert McNamara’s Vietnam War

Wed July 4 No Class – National Holiday

READ: McNamara, In Retrospect

Fred Logevall, “America Isolated: The Western Powers and the Escalation

of the War,” in: Andreas Daum et al, eds., America, the Vietnam War, and the

World (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 175-196

Suri, Power and Principle, pp. 131-163

MOVIE: The Fog of War (Errol Morris)

Week V Movements and Cultures

Mon July 9 Transnational Movements

1st paper due: Write a 3-page book review of McNamara’s book – what type of

memoir is it? Does he explain his role in the Vietnam War persuasively? What is

his personal responsibility in the coming and making of the war?

Wed July 11 Hippies

READ: Marwick, The Sixties, pp. 247-583

Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Week VI Biography of a Year: 1968 – Year of Crises/Turning Points

Mon July 16 The Global 1968 ”Revolutions”

Wed July 18 Prague Spring and Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia

READ: Kurlansky, 1968: The Year that Rocked the World

Gould, 1968: The Election That Changed America

Marwick, Sixties, pp. 584-675

Suri, Power and Principle, pp. 164-212

Week VII Movement Radicalization and Legacies

Mon July 23 Weathermen (U.S.) and RAF (Germany)

Wed July 25 Legacies

READ: Varon, Bringing the War Home

Marwick, The Sixties, pp. 679-806

Suri, Power and Principle, pp. 213-265

Gregory Duhe, “The FBI and Radical Student Movements at the

University of New Orleans, 1968-1971, MA Thesis, University of New Orleans,

1999

MOVIE: The Weather Underground (Sam Green and Bill Siegel)

2^nd paper due: Choose a major political or movement figure of the 1960s and

analyze in which way he/she played a “revolutionary” role in terms of

transforming his/her society permanently! (10 pages)

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