Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs
6th Annual International and Interdisciplinary Conference
March 8-10, 2018
1968: Fifty Years of Struggle
What is this?
This website is a digital archive of the International and Interdisciplinary Conference hosted in 2018 at the Rohatyn Center of Global Affairs at Middlebury College. The site was conceived as a library to increase the accessibility of the recordings of the conference lectures. The conference featured papers from over a dozen scholars. Their presentations can be found either on the ‘Archive’ page, or split into thematic sections on the Home Page.
Why 1968?
If the 1960s “changed modern history,” one year —1968—stands out. In this year, anti-imperialist and anti-establishment forces took to the streets of major cities around the globe, challenging, and even hoping to dismantle, the post-1945 power structure. With the rise of national liberation movements on almost every continent, the Civil Rights and Feminist movements in the U.S., anti-Vietnam demonstrations in the U.S. and around the world, and decolonization in Africa, 1968 pulsed with a new sense of optimism.
It heralded new forms of art, music, thinking, and debate. But in 1968 conservative governments came to power in France, Britain, and the U.S; Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated; the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia and Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution was met with intensifying violence.
In short, on multiple fronts 1968 symbolized the quest for, and intense opposition to, dramatic change in the status quo—an ever-evolving dynamic that continues to date.
Conference Organizers:
Tamar Mayer, Robert R. Churchill Professor of Geosciences and Director of the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs, mayer@middlebury.edu
Edward Vazquez, Associate Professor of History of Art & Architecture, evazquez@middlebury.edu
Mark Williams, Professor of Political Science, mwilliam@middlebury.edu
