Counterculture, Youth, Revolt. The Sixties in Literature, Arts and Music

elective courses

Classroom

The course is devoted to the examination of cultural, social, and political contexts of the Sixties Counterculture as they are reflected in British literature, rock lyrics, films and arts. Our discussions will focus on the emergence of youth subcultures and on iconoclastic rebellions against the socio-political status quo, as well as on various forms of experimentation in arts and life styles.

The course is devoted to the examination of the decade of the Sixties in its complex social, cultural and political contexts. The Sixties was the time of major social transformations, cultural innovation and youthful rebellion, which still provokes controversy – to some, it is the beginning of many emancipation movements which paved the way to the world of today, including free speech and anti-racist movement, women’s and gay liberation, student activism, environmentalism; to others, it signifies the dead end of liberal culture which had to culminate with the conservative backlash against most of its assumptions in the next decade.

Concentrating on the British cultural context, we shall discuss in detail the wide geopolitical and socio-historical of thew 1960s placing the decade against the background of the post-war status quo in Europe and the world. We shall look here at issues such as the cold war and the psychological impact of the threat of nuclear war on the generation, the Cuban missile crisis, the Vietnam war, the racial conflict in the south of the US, and also the political events in Hungary (1956), as well as the 1968 events in Czechoslovakia, France, China and Poland (March 1968 and December 1970).

We shall examine youth subcultures of the Sixties and the emergence of youth as a significant social, cultural and economic force, with its own music, fashion, life-style. We shall discuss the Sixties permissiveness and sexual liberation, which resulted not only in the relaxation of moral and social conventions, but also in abolishing literary, film and stage censorship. We shall trace in detail the emergence of the Sixties popular and rock music as a universal language and its evolution from entertainment to art, often aesthetically challenging and inspiring for many modern classical and jazz musicians, becoming at the same time the voice of social and political protest. During the course we will look at the images of the Sixties in British literature, but also in rock lyrics, films and arts. The issues addressed during the course will include: the concept of counterculture and alternative society; the critique of mass culture, mass media, consumerism and technocratic society; the hippies and hippy communes; the role of folk and rock music, Greenwich Village; Swinging London and the Sixties fashion; psychedelic and drug culture; the impact of the East - the hippy trail. We shall examine the appearance of the music festivals and the emergence of the new format of mass cultural events (Monterey, Woodstock, Altamont, The Isle of Wight).

We shall devote a lot of attention to the British school of comedy in both television and film format (A Hard Day’s Night, How I Won the War, Magical Mystery Tour, at Last the 1948 Show, Do Not Adjust Your Sets, The Complete and Utter History of Britain, Monty Python). We shall also look at the work of the influential film directors of the period (Richard Lester, Jean Luc Godard, Stanley Kubrick, Dennis Hopper), as well as the movies that shaped the collective consciousness of the decade (Zabriskie Point, Space Odyssey 2001, The Vanishing Point, Easy Rider, The Planet of the Apes).

We shall discuss the role of the pivotal personalities of the period, such as Timothy Leary, Lenny Bruce, Andy Warhol, or Martin Luther King.

We will examine these and other issues as reflected in British literature of the period, but also in the works produced later, offering a distanced and sometimes critical view of the decade.

Aldgate, Anthony (ed.): Windows on the Sixties. Exploring Key Texts of Media and Culture, Tauris Publishers 2000.Braunstein, Peter (ed.): Imagine Nation. The Counterculture of the Sixties and Seventies, Routledge 2002.Crow, Thomas: The Rise of the Sixties, London 1996.Donnelly, Mark: Sixties Britain. Culture, Society and Politics, Pearson 2005. Green, Jonathon: Days in the Life. Voices from the English Underground 1961-1971, Pimlico 1998. Grunenberg, Christoph (ed.): Summer of Love. Psychedelic Art, Social Crisis and Counterculture in the 1960’s, Liverpool 2005.Heylin, Clinton: Revolution in the Air. The Songs of Bob Dylan 1957-1973, Chicago 2009.Horn, Gerd-Rainer: The Spirit of ’68. Rebellion in Western Europe and North America 1956-1976, OUP 2007.MacDonald, Ian: Revolution in the Head. The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties, Pimlico 2005.Marwick, Arthur: The Sixties, OUP 1999.Miles, Barry: In the Sixties, Cape 2002.Moore-Gilbert, Bart (ed.): Cultural Revolution? The Challenge of the Arts in the 1960’s, Routledge 1992.Open University: The Sixties. Mainstream Culture and Counterculture, Milton Keynes 2005.Roszak, Theodore: The Making of a Counterculture, Berkeley 1995.Schneider, Matthew: The Long and Winding Road from William Blake to the Beatles, Palgrave 2008.Stephens, Julie: Anti-Disciplinary Protest. Sixties Radicalism and Postmodernism, CUP 1998.Thompson, Gordon: Please, Please Me. Sixties British Pop Inside Out, OUP 2008.Womack, Kenneth (ed.): The Cambridge Companion to the Beatles, CUP 2009.

Knowledge

Students will be able to:

K_W01- Identify and characterize on an advanced level the place and status of the studies of the cultural phenomena of the 1960s within the humanities

K_W02- Describe on an advanced level the current trends in literary studies research within the studies of the cultural phenomena of the 1960s

K_W04- Characterize on an advanced level the principles of research design related to the studies of the cultural phenomena of the 1960s with special focus on the application of methods and tools in formulating research problems

K_W05- Identify the notions and principles pertinent to intellectual property and copyright

Abilities

Students will be able to:

K_U01- Apply advanced terminology and notions pertinent to the studies of the cultural phenomena of the 1960s

K_U02-Apply advanced research methodology within the studies of the cultural phenomena of the 1960s , respecting ethical norms and copyright law

K_U03-Apply knowledge obtained during the course to account for and solve a problem, thereby completing a research task related to the studies of the cultural phenomena of the 1960s

K_U04- Analyze phenomena related to the culture and art of the 1960s and draw generalizations on their basis in the context of societal, historical and economic factors on an advanced level

K_U05- Discern alternative methodological paradigms within the studies of the cultural phenomena of the 1960s

K_U06- Find information in various sources and critically assess its usefulness for research related to the topic of the MA project

Social competences

Students will be ready to:

K_K02- Apply knowledge and skills obtained during the course to undertake lifelong learning, as well as personal and professional development

K_K03- Take responsibility for performing one’s professional duties, with due respect for the work of others, obey and develop the ethical norms in professional and academic settings related to the disciplines included on the curriculum of English studies

K_K04- Assess critically one’s own knowledge and skills related to the studies of the cultural phenomena of the 1960s

K_K06- Value cultural heritage and cultural diversity as well as individual opinions

Education at language level B2+.

Credit is awarded on the basis of an essay, or a presentation discussing an an individually researched project

a maximum of 3 absences allowed