Social Memory and the 1960s: From Nixon to Nostalgia

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From the Civil Rights movement to the Vietnam War, women’s liberation to Woodstock, the 1960s were a time of political and cultural turbulence in the US. This class explores the ways in which the decade persists in American collective memory, and how its legacies have become embodied in modern day texts, images, music, memorials, and rituals. Students will use the interdisciplinary methods of memory studies to address these questions, analyzing both primary and secondary source material. Those interested in sociology, anthropology, and history will find new approaches to enduring questions about how societies remember and forget crucial events and experiences.