Modern History and Literature Program, Caspersen School of Graduate Studies
Drew University, Madison New Jersey
November 3-4, 2006
Email: 68hist@drew.edu
Website: http://groups.drew.edu/68hist

The Drew University Modern History and Literature Program Graduate Student Conference on 1968 will attempt to explore this question from a number of different angles. Areas of interest include:

• Geographies of Protest: rebel energies in Western and Eastern Europe, North and Latin America, China and Southeast Asia.
• Gender Trouble: radical transformations in gender relations and sexual identity; the women's movement; gay and lesbian rights activism.
• Protest and Print Culture: pamphlets, manifestoes, plays, the underground press, literature, posters, graphic novels, and “comix.”
• Popular Culture and the Media Massage:
cross-referential/interdisciplinary investigations into film, music, television, advertising, fashion, and “pop-art.”
• Political Ideologies: Marxism, Maoism, anarchism, the Frankfurt School, Situationism, internationalism, anti-colonialism, liberalism, the roots of contemporary conservatism.
• Theoretical Explorations: the rise and fall of Marxism, the universal vs. the local intellectual, post-structuralist stirrings, anticipations of globalization.
• Counter-cultures: hippies, Yippies, Diggers, Provos , communards, enragés, happenings, undergrounds, scenes.
• Technology: Future Shock; cybernetics and informatics; from Haight-Ashbury to Silicon Valley; the birth of the digital revolution.
• Religion: liberation theology; priests, pastors, and protest; journeys East and West; origins of New Age religion; the roots of contemporary fundamentalisms.

The papers need not be limited to the areas and topics listed above, nor the year 1968 as such. Rather, we encourage the creative combination of two or more areas of interest, as well as attempts to theorize the connection between various events, logics, and genres. Those submitting paper proposals should be graduate students, post-docs, or very recent Ph.D.'s. Please submit a one-page abstract of your paper with your affiliation and contact information by snail mail or email to:

Cheryl Oestreicher, Conference Chair
Drew-CM 1124
36 Madison Avenue
Madison , NJ 07940
68hist@drew.edu

Keynote Speaker: Jeremy Suri, Professor of History, University of Wisconsin – Madison. Author of Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente (Harvard) and The Global Revolutions of 1968 (Norton, forthcoming).
Special Presenter: Mark Rudd, leader of the 1968 Columbia University strike and occupation; National Secretary of Students for a Democratic Society; co-founder of the Weather Underground.

Faculty Sponsor: Jeremy Varon, Professor of History, Drew University. Author of Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies (California ).

Drew University is located in Madison New Jersey, thirty miles from New York City . A commuter train runs from Madison to Penn Station in less than an hour.