Sixties Generations Conference

From Montgomery to Viet Nam

4-6 November, 1994

Western Connecticut State University

Danbury, CT

Sponsored by >Viet Nam Generation, Inc., Western Connecticut State University, and the Connecticut Council for the Humanities.

Friday, November 4:

8:15-9:00:

Continental breakfast (coffee and tea available all day).

9:00-10:30

Panel 1A: Viet Nam War Literature

• "Writers Against the Vietnam War," Cynthia Dubin Edelberg, Cleveland State University.
• "Internationalists First, Patriots Second: Toward Global Consciousness in Representations of the Vietnam War," Nancy Reincke, Drake University.
• "Forrest Whom?: The Vietnam War and the 1960s as Subtext in Contemporary Fiction," Cathey Calloway, Arkansas State University.

Panel 1B: National Politics

• "Middletown and the Gulf of Tonkin: A Turning Point that Was Barely Noticed," Tony Edmonds, Ball State University.
• Richard the Good: The Transformation of Richard Nixon in the Popular Media, 1962-1968," Michael B. Friedland, Boston College.
• "LBJ: Doomed by American Hubris," Samuel F. Dodson, Dana College.

10:45-12:15 pm

Panel 2A: The Right Wing

• "Anticommunist Propaganda: Operation Abolition, Communism on the Map, and other Radical Right Films Featured at Military-Sponsored Cold War Seminars of the Early 1960s," Lori Bogle, University of Arkansas.
• "JFK and the Right-Wing,," John Andrew, Franklin & Marshall College.
• "A Contest Between Rival Elites: Re-Interpreting the Sixties," Paul Lyons, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.

Panel 2B: War in Viet Nam

• "Thich Nhat Hanh & Third Way Politics: The 1960s and the 1990s," Patricia Hunt-Perry, Ramapo College.
• "Amerasians: The Lost Generation of the Vietnam War," Jerome Landman, Ball State University.
• "Compiling an Anthology of Postwar Vietnamese Fiction," Wayne Karlin.

12:15-1:15 pm

Box lunches available

12:30-1:30 pm

• Special Session: Teleconference with John Nance & Joe Cantrell, Photographers. Moderated by John Briggs, Western Connecticut State University.

  John Nance, an Associated Press news reporter and photojournalist in Vietnam between 1965 and 1968, presents mini photo essays of individuals caught in the war zones near Cambodia and the Mekong Delta. Joe Cantrell, a member of the Cherokee nation who served two tours with the U.S. Navy in Vietnam, presents images fromthe Philippines and the U.S. after the war to represent the Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome of veterans. Nance and Cantrell will discuss their photos and answer questions at this session.

1:45-3:15 pm

Panel 3A: The Viet Nam War

• "Montagnards: The Indigenous People of Vietnam: Transitional Tug-of-War and the Sins of Assimilation," William P. Badger, Jr., Principia College.
• "Vietnam: Religions, Values, and Philosophies," Kimberly Hoyt, Principia College.

1:45-3:15pm

Panel 4A: Sixties Literature

• "Anaïs Nin and the Sixties," Benjamin Franklin V, Univ. of S. Carolina.
• "The Author/Student Relationship in Paule Marshall and Alice Walker," David L. Erben, University of South Florida.
• "The Critic and the Zeitgeist: Alfred Kazin's '60s," Michael J. Birkner, Gettysburg College.

Panel 4B: Gender

• "Most Were Making a Real Attempt to be Unattractive: The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Women's Liberation Movement," Leah D. Hackleman, Bowling Green State University.
• "Gender Roles in Communes of the Late 1960s and Early 1970s," Jennifer Moore, Bowling Green State University.
• "Patchwork: Re-Membering Vietnam, 1994," Rebecca Blevins Faery, Harvard University.

3:30-5:00 pm

Panel 5A: Sixties Literature

• "American Crawl: Else and Other," Paul Allen, College of Charleston.
• "Poetry, Privacy, and Politics," Deborah Nelson, CUNY
• "New Journalism: A Literary Form for the 60s," Rebecca Jackson, George Washington University.

Panel 5B: Special Presentation on Women's Intervention in the Viet Nam War

• "The Committee of Liason with Prisoners in Viet Nam," Cora Weiss.

5:15-6:45 pm

Panel 6A: Student Activism

• "Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Assimilationist Integration, Higher Education, and the Rise of Black Student Activism in the mid-1960s," Karen Miller, Boston College.
• "No War, No Welfare, and No Damn Taxation: The Student Libertarian Movement, 1968-1972," Jonathan Schoenwald, Stanford University.
• "'Long Hair Is Our Black Skin': Aspirations Toward Otherness in Sixties Youth Writing," Fred Ashe, Birmingham Southern College.

Panel 6B: Viet Nam War Literature

• "The Vietnam that Never Was: The Ugly American as Intertextual Influence on Going After Cacciato," Edward Palm, Glenville State College.
• "The Politics of Going After Cacciato ," Dave Kuebrich, George Mason University.
• "Canonicity in Viet Nam War Literature: One to Count Cadence and The Bamboo Bed ," N. Bradley Christie, Erskine College

7:30-8:30 pm

• Evening Program I:

  Reading by David Connolly & W.D. Ehrhart

9:00-10:30 pm

• Evening Program II:

  Performance and dance music by
  M.L. Liebler & the Magic Poetry Band.

Saturday, November 5

8:15-9:00

Continental breakfast (coffee and tea available all day).

9:00-10:30

Panel 7A: Viet Nam War

• "Yesterday I Swam at China Beach," Irene C. Goldman, Ball State University.
• "The Myth of the Spat-Upon Vietnam Veteran," Lerry Lembcke, College of the Holy Cross.
• "The Commodification of Sanctity: Selling the Viet Nam War," John Baky, LaSalle University.

Panel 7B: Red Diaper Babies: From the Old Left to the New and Beyond

• "Standing at the Intersection of the Declining Old Left, the Beginnings of the New Left, and the Re-Emergence of Feminism," Barbara Epstein, University of California at Santa Cruz and Socialist Review.
• "We Are Your Sons, the Legacy of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg: How Did an 'Old Left' Background Guide One Individual's 'Take' on the Explosion of New Left Activity after 1966," Mike Meeropol, New England College.
• "From a Jewish Chicken Farm to the Cane Fields of Cuba to the First Gay Protests in New York," Allen Young, Liberation News Service Collective, 1967-1970, Vice President for Public Relations/Marketing, Athol Memorial Hospital.

10:45-12:15 pm

Panel 8A: Civil Rights Movement

• "Civil War on Race Street: Cambridge, Maryland during the 1960s," Peter B. Levy, York College.
• "We'll Take Our Stand: SSOC and Southern White Student Activism, 1964-1969," Gregg L. Michel, UVA Charlottesville.
• "Blacks and Latinos vs. Bart: Forging a Community in West Oakland During the Mid-1960s," Joseph A. Rodriguez, University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee

Panel 8B: Arts

• "Hair: The Hippie Trip on Broadway," Barbara Lee Horn, St. John's University.
• ""Paradise Revisited: The Ongoing Mission of the Living Theatre," David Callaghan, CUNY Graduate Center.
• "Can't Forget the Motor City: Motown and Black Power," Charles Piotrowski, Case Western Reserve University.

12:15-1:15 pm

Box lunches available

12:30-2:15 pm

• Civil Rights in Danbury in the 1960s: A Symposium
  • Part 1: "What were the issues then and what are they now? Similarities and differences."
  • Part 2: Where Do We Go From Here? Current and future civil rights strategies.

    Two interacting panels of local civil rights leaders will reflect on the 1960s civil rights movement in order to illuminate current local and national civil rights issues. Moderated by George Coleman, Adjunct Professor of Social Science, WCSU, and chief of the Bureau of Early Childhood Educationa nd Social Services, Connecticut Department of Education.

2:20-4:20 pm