Thursday, May 10, 201812:00 PM - 1:30 PM
10383 Bunche Hall
From the streets of Paris’s Latin Quarter to Mexico’s city center, from the campuses of Berkeley and Columbia University to those of the University of Warsaw, from Czechoslovakia to Brazil, 1968 can be considered as a year of international revolts and protests. Students, workers, women and racial minorities took the streets, squares, and campuses of major cities throughout the world, almost simultaneously claiming freedom, democracy and peace.
1968: A Year of Protests will analyze the “moment 68” from the perspective of comparative global history and transnational cultural studies. It will examine the synchrony of the facts and the dynamics at stake, the contexts and contents of the protests and their particular locations, questioning the type of history we can produce collectively. The lecture will explore and compare the protest movements in themselves— their actors, strategies and ideologies, their successes and also their failures. It will particularly address intellectual bridges built between Paris and Warsaw, and focus on the role of the youth—students of course, but also young workers and activists. The lecture will be accompanied by a rich iconography of photographs, film excerpts, music and archives.
The respondent Marcus Hunter (Associate Professor of Sociology and African American Studies) will broaden the topic speaking about African American protests in 1968, in the context of the aftermath of the Watts riots, the development of the Black Panthers Movement and the assassination of Martin Luther King.
Martha Kirszenbaum is a curator and writer based in Los Angeles. She graduated from Sciences Po in Paris and Columbia University in New York with an M.A. in Political History and Cultural Studies. Kirszenbaum has founded and directed Fahrenheit, an exhibition space and residency program in Los Angeles (2014-16). Previously she worked at the Media Department of MoMA in New York (2006-07), the Photography Department of Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (2007) and at the New Museum in New York (2008-10). She acted as a curator-in-residence at Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw (2010) and the Belvedere Museum/21er Haus in Vienna (2012), and as the Associate Curator at the Kunsthalle Mulhouse (2014). She is a regular contributor to Flash Art, Mousse, CURA and Kaleidoscope among other publications, and has led seminars at the Université Paris VIII and Parsons in Paris.
Cost : Free and open to the public. RSVP not required for admission.
Sponsor(s): Center for European and Russian Studies