OSU-Cascades Students Focus on the Impact of the 1960s on American Culture

Sept. 23, 2009

This fall, OSU-Cascades Department of Liberal Studies will offer students an American Studies Project  focusing on the issues and movements that emerged in America during the turbulence of the 1960s.  The project consists of a series of courses that will allow students to develop a broad understanding of the 1960s and the impact that decade has had on current society. Through film, music, literature, history, politics, and art, students will engage in contemporary questions about American culture in their historical and global contexts.  The integration of the concepts that emerge in the various courses and from the variety of media sources, will encourage students to develop skilled thought processes that can help navigate across the complexities of today's informational society.

The courses offered include:

American Culture and the Vietnam Experience

Neil Browne, English Professor

This course will examine the historical context of the Vietnam War, and the myriad and lasting effects of the conflict on American culture and the American imagination.  Students will explore literature written by men and women who served in Vietnam, documentary film about the war and examine the reaction to the war in the United States through visual images and new journalism.

Teen Film

Henry Sayre, Distinguished Professor of Art History 

By studying films that portray the youth culture of the 1960s and 1970s, students will grasp how young people are perceived by a culture that is often transfixed on youth, and what that tells us about our American selves then and today?

The Grateful Dead, Deadheads, and Cultural Communication

Natalie Dollar, Associate Professor of Speech Communication 

Students will look at how The Grateful Dead and their fans have contributed to American culture by exploring their evolving cultural communication landscape.  Among the topics for class discussion: band and fan interactions, 'deadhead' interactions, recording and sharing live concerts, independent and public radio broadcasts, art and lyrics, record label and ticket sales, and the dynamics of a Grateful Dead show.

Civil Rights Movement and Politics

James Foster, Political Science Professor

We usually associate The Civil Rights Movement with the 1960s.  Students will examine how, although key events took place in that decade the March on Washington, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., to name a few these events culminated over a century of struggle. In this class students will explore the antecedents to and aftermath of The Civil Rights Movement, and enduring questions in American politics.

 

For more information about the Liberal Studies Program and the American Studies Project, contact Neil Browne at neil.browne@osucascades.edu.