Freedom Dreams: The Cultural Revolutions of the 1960s

REVISED

Fall 2012 and Winter 2013 quarters

Faculty

Greg Mullins comparative literature, American studies , Trevor Griffey U.S. history

Fields of Study

African American studies, American studies, history and literature

Preparatory for studies or careers in

history, literature, and fields related to social and cultural analysis such as education, human services, government, policy, etc.

Description

Where is home, and what would it be like to be free?

According to cultural critic Robin DG Kelley, these burning questions about love and belonging, and not mere experiences of oppression, lay at the heart of the radical imagination. “Once we strip radical social movements down to their bare essence and understand the collective desires of people in motion,” he says, “freedom and love lay at the very heart of the matter.”

Taking Kelley’s insight as our starting point, this program will use the study of history and literature to explore the intersections between three revolutionary social movements of the 1960s: the black freedom movement, the women’s liberation movement, and the sexual liberation movement.

Our focus in fall will be themes of home and exile, freedom and slavery, and the role of love in imagining the kind of world we want to live in. We will revisit the history of the black freedom movement to imagine what civil rights movement history might look like if told as the struggle for a new world instead of the struggle for political rights. We will visit Washington DC on a field trip during the first week of November to study the politics of remembering the civil rights movement, including the iconic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in August, 1963.

Our inquiry into the black freedom movement will serve as a model for how we then move on to explore the literature and histories of the women’s liberation and gay and lesbian sexual liberation movements during winter quarter. Instead of studying them as mere demands for political rights, we will study ways in which their demands for liberation opened up a space for revolutionary politics, and how activists’ radical imagination for what liberation would mean inspired the cultural revolutions of the 1960s.

Location

Olympia

Online Learning

Hybrid Online Learning < 25% Delivered Online

Books

Greener Store

Required Fees

Aproximately $300-$833 (optional) for a trip to Washington, D.C. in addition to $10 for entrance fees in fall; $25 for entrance fees in winter.

Special Expenses

Approximately $175-$575 for the optional trip to Washington, D.C. (expenses will vary upon student choice for transportation, meals, etc.).

Offered During

Day

Program Revisions