OXFORD,
Miss. – From the assassination of civil rights activist Martin Luther
King Jr. to the death of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia by
Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops, around the world, 1968 was a tumultuous
year.
That same year, the Tet offensive was launched in
Vietnam with Viet Cong soldiers attacking the United States Embassy in
Saigon. It was also a time of moral and cultural struggles, as Pope
Paul VI condemned birth control and 150 women protested against the
Miss America Pageant.
In light of those happenings, the two-day workshop “What Remains? 1968 in the European and American Imaginary” is scheduled next week at the University of Mississippi. Sponsors are UM’s departments of Modern Languages and History, Croft Institute for International Studies, Sally McDonnell-Barksdale Honors College and Sarah Isom Center for Women.
The workshop is free and open to the public and registration is not required.
Martin Klimke of the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C., delivers the keynote speech at 5 p.m. Friday (Oct. 17) in the Croft Institute’s Joseph C. Bancroft Room. His address is titled “The Struggle Continues: The 60s in Transnational Cultural Memory.”
“The purpose of this workshop is to look at 1968 as a moment making its way into the cultural memory of both eastern and western Europe as well as America,” said panelist and UM German studies scholar Corina Petrescu. “As we witness the 40th anniversary of the events unfolding that year, one must consider how they are remembered today, and what statement the way in which they are remembered makes about contemporary societies.
“It’s important for us to understand what people access as culturally important. It’s an in-depth look at history and how certain events enter into history.”
Saturday sessions begin at 9 a.m., with a look at eastern European reforms, specifically The Prague Spring and the media fallout in Romania. The following morning session examines western European unrest, specifically Germany’s student protest, as well as the fraternization between students and workers in France leading to the collapse of the De Gaulle government. The afternoon session focuses on America, specifically the riots that resulted during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago as well as the aftermath of King’s assassination.
UM history professor Chiarella Esposito believes the youthful protests and riots of the time were a signal that the post-World War II generation did not accept Cold War logics as readily as the generation that fought that war. She said young people then saw the Cold War as both a constant threat of nuclear annihilation, and above all, an ideological straight-jacket.
“The 1968 protestors helped produce an enduring counter culture – in academia, the arts and pop – that fundamentally undermined the very premises upon which the Cold War dichotomy rested,” Esposito said. “Thus, 1968 could indeed be interpreted as the beginning of the end of the Cold War.”
For more information, contact Corina Petrescu at 662-915-7716 or petrescu@olemiss.edu. For assistance related to a disability, call 662-915-1500.