Sixties Generations Conference

From Montgomery to Viet Nam
5-8 October, 1995

Western Connecticut State University
Danbury, CT

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

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4

7:00:

Reception at Ethan Allen Inn, Danbury, CT.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5

8:15-9:00:

Continental breakfast (coffee and tea available all day).

9:00-10:30am:

PANEL 1: POLICY & POPULAR CULTURE

• "From El Paso to Oklahoma City: Probing the Origins of the Debate Over the 'Viet Nam Winnable War Thesis' and the Rise of the American Militia Movement," Marc Jason Gilbert, North Georgia College
• "The Antiwar Movement on Long Island," Chuck Howlett, West Islip, NY.
• "John Ford and the Creation of the John Wayne Myth," John J. Fitzgerald, Longmeadow, MA.

10:45-12:15 pm:

Panel 2A: DEALING WITH THE OTHER: GENDER, IDEOLOGY & THE SIXTIES

• "'It's My Turn Now': Gender, Unruliness and the Politics of Pleasure in Susan Stern's With the Weathermen: The Personal Journey of a Revolutionary Woman," Philip Dickinson, Bowling Green State University
• "'Slouching Towards Bethlehem': Joan Didion's World Falls Apart," Jim Miller, Bowling Green State University
• "Oh Sweet Janis: Sex, Liberation, and the Paradoxes of Feminism," Kelly Mayhew, Bowling Green State University

PANEL 2B: COUNTERCULTURES

• "Where the Rebels Are: American Popular Counterculture as Strange Attractors," Raymond J. Haberski, Jr., Ohio University.
• "Court Jesters of the Revolution:" Absurdist Themes and Satire (1955-1966) in the Shaping of the Youth International Party," Brian Mullgardt, University of Illinois at Carbondale.
• "Enlarging the Frame of Reference: The Free City Vision of the Diggers," Michael Wm. Doyle, Cornell University.

12:15-1:15 pm:

Box lunches available

12:30-1:30 pm:

SPECIAL LUNCH SESSION 1: "Commodification of the Vietnam War," John Baky, LaSalle University

Slide show presentation

1:45-3:15 pm:

PANEL 3A: GENDER

• "The Territory Colonized: Bodies and Nationalism in Women's Liberation," Michael Bibby, Shippensburg University.
• "Chicks to Libbers: 'The Sixties' and the R/Evolution of Feminist Subjects," Leah Hackleman, Columbus, OH.
• "The Latest Distraction: Generational Feminisms and the Media," Shannon E. Shelton, George Mason University.

PANEL 3B: MUSIC

• "Jazz, Religion, and the Critique of Consumer Capitalism: Mary Lou Williams, Duke Ellington, and 60s Sacred Concerts," James C. Hall, University of Illinois at Chicago.
• "Sounds of '68: Internationalism and Experimentation in Music," Barbara Tischler, Columbia University.

3:30-5:00 pm:

PANEL 4A: GENDER

• "Women's Poetic Voices: Transformations in Women's Poetry of the 1960s," Rebecca Jackson, George Washington University.
• "Women Strike for Peace," Ellen Pinzur, Cambridge, MA.

PANEL 4B: SIXTIES TO NINETIES: CULTURAL CONNECTIONS

• "Guerrilla Television: TVTV," Michael Ward, George Mason University
• "Transgression, Resistance, and Visibility, On the Position of Youth in the '90s," Todd Ramlow, George Mason University
• "Whining White Boys and Rebellion in the Nineties," Cynthia Fuchs, George Mason University.

5:15-6:45 pm:

PANEL 5A: MEMORY

• "Possessive Memory and the Sixties Generation," Peter Braunstein, New York University
• "The Neoconservative Redescribing the 1960s: In Search of Identity and Reputation through Interpretation of Memory," Avital Bloch, University of Colima, Mexico
• "Bringing It All Back Home: The Vietnam War as Mental Illness," Fred Turner, Boston, MA.
• Moderator: Ted Morgan, Lehigh University

PANEL 5B: REPRESENTING VIETNAMESE AND VIETNAMESE-AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

• "Translating Viet Nam," Martha Collins
• "From Exile Literature to Immigrant Literature: New Works by Vietnamese American Writers," Renny Christopher, California State University, Stanislaus
• "Vietnamese Film/U.S. Spectator: Moving the Mirrors," Kim Worthy, Brooklyn, NY.

6:15-6:30:

SPECIAL SESSION 2: BETWEEN THE LINES: PHOTOGRAPHS MADE AT THE VIETNAM VETERANS MEMORIAL

Slide presentation by Tom Morrissey, Lincoln, RI.

7:00-8:30 pm:

Buffet dinner for ticketholders, served in coffeehouse.

8:00-11:00 pm:

COFFEEHOUSE READINGS

READINGS BY:

Chris Butters
Horace Coleman
Martha Collins
David Connolly
Jacques Leslie
Frank Panzarella (music)
Dale Ritterbusch
David Vancil

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 7

8:15-9:00:

Continental breakfast (coffee and tea available all day).

9:00-10:30:

WORKSHOP 1: TEACHING THE SIXTIES

Led by John Andrew, Franklin and Marshall College and Ted Morgan, Lehigh University

The 1960s has long been contested territory, and teaching the period immediately embroils instructors in the controversies that have swirled in and around the era. The problems are many: definition, coverage, bias, issues of personal memory and experience in an academic environment, and even the topics that can and/or should be included. While these are problems that confront instructors who teach any period in history, their ongoing political relevance have heightened their impact for those of us who teach the 1960s. We propose a roundtable discussion, with audience participation essential, about the intellectual problems of teaching the sixties. We are content to leave to others the technical issues, and wish to focus on larger questions. These will, necessarily, take us from pedagogy to substance and back again.

PANEL 6: LEGACIES

• "The Sixties: Meaning and Legacy," Paul Lyons, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey
• "In the World But Not of It," The Evolution of Christian Right Thought in the Sixties," Mark Sonntag, Ohio University.
• "De Borchgrave's The Spike and Reagan's Revenge," John A. Williams, Principia College.

10:45-12:00 pm:

WORKSHOP 2: THE ANTIWAR MOVEMENT: WHERE IT CAME FROM AND WHERE IT WENT

Led by Bruce Franklin, Rutgers University. [Note: Bruce Franklin cancelled due to illness, and the workshop was led by Marc Jason Gilbert, North Georgia College.]

The movement against the Vietnam War has been so thoroughly rewritten and re-imaged that we have lost all its most important lessons for the 1990s. This is no accident,, for that movement eventually posed a serious danger to the political, economic, and cultural matrix of the war: U.S. imperialism. The antiwar movement was not primarily a student movement, and was certainly not primarily an expression of wealthy white youth. In fact, antiwar sentiment and activities were inversely proportional to both economic status and education. The movement against the war actually began in 1954, long before any large-scale commitment of U.S. military forces. When it became a mass movement in 1965, it was fundamentally aimed at achieving peace through education, and it was based on what now seem incredibly naive assumptions about the causes and purposes of the war. From then through the early 1970s, the movement transformed from a peace movement to an anti- imperialist movement. Three factors were mainly responsible for this transformation: 1) The lessons participants learned through their own experience about the nature of U.S. history, political economy, media, and culture. 2) The powerful liberation movements of the African-American and other Third World peoples oppressed internally by U.S. imperialism, especially as manifest in the urban rebellions of the 1964-1968 period. 3) The Tet Offensive, which shifted the vision of th Vietnamese from objects of pity to allies in a global revolution.

12:00-1:00 pm:

Box lunches available

12:15-1:15 pm:

SPECIAL LUNCH SESSION 2: "Vietnamese Afro-Amerasians: Pictorial and Personal Narrative."

Parisian photojournalist Remy Gastambide presents his slides of Vietnamese Afro-Amerasians and his own personal narrative.

12:30-2:30 pm:

PANEL 7A: ANTIWAR MOVEMENT

• "Digging a Hole and `Burning' a Dog: How the Antiwar Movement at Ball State University Ended Not with a Bang but with a Woof, " Anthony O. Edmonds, Ball State University
• "UConn-frontation: Dissent, Unrest and Protest in a Student Social Movement at the University of Connecticut, 1959-1973," Frank Parady, Stamford, CT.
• "The Peace Movement at the Local Level: The Syracuse Peace Council in the 1960s," Allen Smith, American University.
• "Public Policy Debates and American Innocence in Post-War American Movies About Asia," Robert Berger, Wichita State University

PANEL 7B: ORAL HISTORIES

• "Between the Lines: Photographs Made at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial," Tom Morrissey, Lincoln, RI.
• "Voices from the Underground: The Making of a Book," Ken Wachsberger, Eastern Michigan University
• "From Camelot to Kent State: Oral Histories of the 1960s," Joan Morrison, Morristown, NJ.
• "Ron Ridenhour on My Lai," Randy Fertel, Tulane University

2:45-4:15 pm:

WORKSHOP 3: RESEARCHING THE SIXTIES

Led by Rebecca Jackson, George Washington University; John Baky, La Salle University; Ann Kelsey.

Panelists will address issues of researching the 1960s. Because this is a period in which materials are so widely dispersed and of so many different types, sources can be found in many places and forms. There are primary sources to be found in newspapers (underground and traditional), magazines, audiotapes, videos and films, government documents, manuscript collections, and books, published both during the period and afterwards. In addition, more and more secondary sources are being published so that to keep up with the scholarship is becoming a monumental task. Traditional methods of doing literature searches often yield unmanageable amounts of information, because of the broad nature of the subject and the difficulty of searching during this specific period. How does a scholar who is working on an aspect of the 1960s get a handle on this vast network of information sources? What are some strategies and methods of gathering information that have worked for such scholars? What is needed to make researching the 1960s more manageable? How does one get started in undertaking such research? We suggest that those who attend this workshop bring their own research questions and pose them to the panel. This is a forum for sharing research information, defining common problems, and exploring resources.

4:15-5:45 pm:

PANEL 8A: RACE

• "Panthermania: New Journalism and the Black Panther Party," Michael E. Staub, Bowling Green State University.
• "The Sixties: Challenging interpretations of a Gender/Race Consciousness in the Civil Rights Movement," Karen McDevitt, Milford, MI.
• "The Persistence of Memory: Bloods and Social Commentary," Brian Adler, Valdosta State University

PANEL 8B: THE COMBINED ACTION PLATOON

• "The Combined Action Platoon," Robert Flynn, Trinity University
• "The People of Papa Three: A Photographic Record of the Combined Action Program," Edward F. Palm, Glenville State College.

6:00-7:30 pm:

PANEL 9: RACE & NEW LEFT

• "The New Left and the Underground Press in Southern Universities," William T. Martin Riches, University of Ulster at Jordanstown, Northern Ireland.
• "American Indian Movement: Wounded Knee to the Tomahawk Chop," David L. Erben, University of South Florida.
• "The Repercussions of Racial and Class Divisions Within SNCC," Rachel Peterson, Southern Illinois University

7:30-8:30 pm:

Banquet buffet dinner for ticketholders, served in coffeehouse.

8:00-11:00 pm:

COFFEEHOUSE READINGS

READINGS BY:

• R.S. Carlson
• Renny Christopher
• Alan Farrell
• M.L. Liebler & Bill Blank (performance art)
• Fred Marchant
• Emily Wachsberger (music)
• Ken Wachsberger
• David Willson

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 8

8:15-9:00 am:

Continental breakfast (coffee and tea available all day).

9:30-11:00 am:

PANEL 10: VIET NAM WAR

• "A Gender Analysis of the Cuban Missile Crisis," Jennifer Walton, Vassar College
• "American-ARVN Relations During the Viet Nam War," Lisa Goodman, Vassar College
• "Black Power and Viet Nam," Paul Bieber, Vassar College.
• Moderator: Robert Brigham, Vassar College

11:30-1:30 pm:

Box lunches available

12:00-1:30 pm:

Roundtable discussion of plans for next year's conference, suggestions for improvement, funding ideas and general shake-down session.