1968--VOICES OF PROTEST
COMMUNICATION 150
INTEGRATIVE SEMINAR
WINTER1998
INSTRUCTOR: Helene Keyssar
OFFICE: 206 Media Center
OFFICE HOURS: 9:30-11:30 Wednesdays and by appointment
E-MAIL: hkeyssar@weber.ucsd.edu
BOOKS (to purchase at Groundworks):
ALL OF THE FOLLOWING BOOKS ARE NOW IN PAPERBACK. SOME ARE THUS PUBLISHED BY
OTHER PUBLISHERS THAN THOSE LISTED BELOW. UNLESS YOU OWN THE HARD COPY,
PURCHASE THE PAPERBACK FROM GROUNDWORKS.
- Sara Evans, Personal Politics (Vintage, Random House, 1980)
- Todd Gitlin, The Sixties:Years Of Hope, Days Of Rage (Bantam)
- James Miller, Democracy is in the Streets
- Norman Mailer, Miami and the Siege of Chicago, (Primus)
- Ediriwira Sarachchandra, Curfew and a Full Moon
- Neil Sheehan, A Bright and Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and
America In Vietnam( Random House)
ALSO PLEASE PURCHASE READING PACKET from University Reader Printing Service. They will deliver readers to class each meeting for the first two weeks. They are to be purchased following class -- a few minutes will be allowed for this each class in the first few classes.
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
The overall aim of this course is to re-examine and integrate a range of
approaches to communication, approaches that this department groups under the
categories : Communication and Social Force, Communication and Culture and
Communication and the Individual. Since such integration is a matter of ways
of approaching issues, problems and texts in communication, rather than a topic
itself, I have selected as the object of our studies a historical moment in
history -- 1968 -- which should be of significant interest to anyone attempting
today to understand how meanings are made, mediated and empowered both in the
United States and across the world. While the course will focus on the
particular year, 1968, readings will cover the early 1960's through 1968
(plus).
This itself constitutes a claim: 1968 is dramatically distinctive, but the
events it embraces are not born out of nowhere; they have a history. For the
sake of this course, we will consider "The Sixties: 1960-1968" as a
particular evolution and, in some instances, revolution. Within this large
historical topic, we will pay special attention to three issues: first, the
role(s) of students in the upheavals of 1968 (in Europe and Asia as well as in
the United States); second, relationships among events, practices and values
of the Sixties and contemporary situations; and third the power, authority and
interactions of modes of communication in the Sixties; i.e narrative history,
newspapers, documents, declarations, parades, signs, television, music, radio,
film, fiction and oral conversation.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS:
Since we meet only once a week and this is a seminar, you must take seriously
your responsibility to have finished the readings for each week before coming
to class. I will feel free to call on you in class to discuss these readings,
and at least thirty percent of your final grade will depend on your class
participation, including evidence of preparedness for discussion.
In addition to the weekly reading assignments, this course involves a special,
on-going assignment. This assignment requires that, throughout the course, you
read one of several newspapers, in a daily way, not from the present but from
the period January 1- December 31, 1968. Since we have ten weeks in the course
and this period covers fifty two weeks, this means that you would be reading
approximately 5 weeks of 1968 print coverage for every one week of "real" time
in the present. However, since we are limited in time and because there are
some weeks and months of 1968 that are of particular concern to our study,
instead of simply dividing the year in even segments, please follow the
following schedule:
"1968" NEWSPAPER READING SCHEDULE:
- Due January 13, 1998: January 1- February 29 (1968)
- Due January 20: March 1- April 15 (1968)
- Due January 27: April 16 -- May 16 (1968)
- Due February 3: May 17 -- June 16 (1968)
- Due February 10: June 17- July 31 (1968)
- Due February 17: August 1-August 31 (1968)
- Due February 24: September 1- October 31 (1968)
- Due March 3: November 1 - December 31 (1968)
- Due March 10: Review. Finish loose ends. Presentation of paper projects
PLEASE NOTE: The above schedule means that I, not you, am responsible for
presentation(s) on January 6, 1998. You and I will be responsible for
everything not accomplished and for pulling things together at our last class
meeting on March 10, 1998.
To fulfill the "Newspaper Reading" assignment, you will be divided into at
least four groups, each of which will read one newspaper throughout the course.
I suggest that the three newspapers be the San Diego Union, the New
York Times, the International Herald Tribune, and one other
"foreign" newspaper. All of these are available on microfilm through the
University Central library. There are other possibilities, which we can
discuss at our first class meeting, including foreign language newspapers. (The
University Library holds (probably on microfilm) Le Monde and the London
Times for 1968.) Each group can decide how best to fulfill this assignment;
I will discuss possibilities at our first class meeting.
Whatever process you select, however, your group will be responsible for a 10-15
minute report each week on that period's news and the mode of coverage.
WRITTEN ASSIGNMENTS:
You will be required to write two papers for this course. The first paper, 3-5
pages in length, should be focused on a critical examination of the coverage
and representation of one incident or event that ocurred in 1968. You must use
at least three sources for evidence; these sources can include television
tapes, radio, oral history, visual representations such as photographs in
addition to newspaper and magazine reportage. Due: February 3, 1998.
The second paper, due no later than the last day of classes, is to be a
research paper of 10-15 pages in length. It may be an extension of the first
paper, or an examination of a particular movement, group, medium or issue that
addresses one of the two basic questions of the course, noted above. Suggested
topics include:
- Representations of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam
- Photographing the Vietnam War
- Filmic Representations of the war in Vietnam
- Newspaper coverage of 1968
- SDS (Students for a Democratic Society)
- SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Committee)
- SNCC Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee
- Riots in Newark (or Detroit, Watts, New York City, Atlanta, etc.)
- Prague Spring
- May 1968 in Paris
- Origins of The Cultural Revolution in China
- Ideology of The Cultural Revolution in China
- 1968 in China
- The Free Speech Movement
- The Columbia Student Protests
- The role of Martin Luther King
- The candidacy of Robert Kennedy
- The candidacy of Eugene McCarthy
- The assassination of Martin Luther King
- The assassination of Robert Kennedy
- The New Left
- The student movement at UCSD
- The Beatles
- The Rolling Stones
- Bob Dylan and the Sixties
- Joan Baez and the Sixties
- Folk music and the Sixties
- Rock and Roll and The Sixties
- The culture of the counter-culture
- Communes
- Journalists in Vietnam
- Drugs and the Sixties
- The Summer of Love
- Sexuality and the Sixties
- NOW (the National Organization of Women)
- The Women's Movement in the U.S.
- Black theater
- The new theatre of the sixties
- Television programming and the sixties
- TV news in the sixties
- The Republican convention of 1968
- The Democratic convention of 1968
- Origins of the civil rights movement
- The Chicago Five -- trials and tribulations
- Kent State
- Port Huron: 1962
- etc.
WEEKLY ASSIGNMENTS:
- January 6: Discussion of scope, structure and intentions of the course
and lecture on background history leading up to 1968, stressing particularly
the Civil Rights movement, the origins of the student movement and the war in
Vietnam. Introduction of concept of participatory democracy.
- Start on readings due next week
- January 13 : The Beginnings of the Sixties. the Civil Rights Movement
and the Student Movement: Democracy and Participation. The New Left.
- Read: "The Port Huron Statement" (in Appendix) and Chapters 6, 7, 8 in James Miller, "Democracy is in the Streets."
- Part Two: "The Movement" p. 81-192, and Part Four:
p. 348-362 in Gitlin (The Sixties)
- January 20: The War in Vietnam : Whose War was it Anyhow? or Why Were
We in Vietnam? The role(s) of the media. Class and race and Vietnam.
- Screening of segments of Kubrick's :Full Metal Jacket". and "Where Have All the
Flowers Gone?"
- Read: A Bright and Shining Lie (by Neil Sheehan) esp. the Preface and Books I, IV, V, VI
- January 27: 1968. Miami, Chicago and Prague. The U.S. media
context of the Sixties, and the roles of students in relation to events.
Violence and protest. American students and the U.S. government. August 1968: Chicago and Prague. Screenings of news footage from August, 1968.
- Read: Norman Mailer's Miami and Chicago
- The Sixties. Part Four: 12, 13, 14,15, by Todd Gitlin
- February 3:The Advent of the Women's Movement. Alternative Perspectives on the the Sixties
- Short Papers DUE
- Read: Sara Evans: Personal Politics
- Gitlin, The Sixties, Part Four: Chapter 16. "Revolution
in the Revolution."
- February 10:The Idea of a Cultural Revolution: France and the
Student-Worker Movement and China, the Red Guard and the students of the
cultural revolution. Forms of media and forms of culture
- Read: "The Three Kingdoms: Left, Right and Middle" from The Wind Will Not Subside by Nancy and David Milton (reading packet)
- First paper due. See earlier part of syllabus for details.
- February 17: Catch Up on readings. Brief presentations and discussions
of first (short) papers and final term papers. More on culture: Music and the Sixties, esp. 1968.
- Listen to: Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, the Doors, Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, Crosby Stills and Nash, Big Pink and...
- February 24: Mediating change. The Insistent Voices of
Students. The roles of the university. Culture represents social forces.
- Read: Curfew and a Full Moon, Ediriwira Sarachchandra.
- March 3: Representing the culture of the U.S. in film in 1968, Part II.
- Screening of Easy Rider, 1968-69, director: Dennis Hopper.
- Read: "Conclusion" to Democracy is in the Streets, James Miller
- March 10: The power and vulnerability of voices of protest. Summaries of research endeavors.
- Read: Everything you have not yet read for this course.
- Discuss term papers.
- Term papers due. March 10, 1998
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