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The Other 1968s: Counterrevolution, Communism, and Desublimation (Avenali Lecture, Townsend Center for the Humanities) with Todd Gitlin

Mon Nov 05, 2018 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

Presented by the Townsend Center for the Humanities

Free and open to the public. No ticket required. Doors open at 6pm and lecture starts at 6:30pm.

Sociologist and cultural critic Todd Gitlin is this year’s Avenali Chair in the Humanities. Gitlin notes that, in 1968, the American left felt poised on the brink of a revolution. That year was also, in the United States, the beginning of a massive political rollback on behalf of white supremacy and plutocratic revival, culminating decades later in the election of a virulent racist. Internationally, it was the beginning of the end for the Communist movement. And it saw the opening-up of a culture of apolitical “subversion." Author of 16 books, including The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage, Gitlin will deliver a lecture in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the watershed political year 1968. In writing about the 1960s, Gitlin draws upon his role as a key player in the political events about which he writes — particularly his experience as president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and organizer of the first national demonstration against the Vietnam War. Following his involvement in SDS, Gitlin earned his PhD in sociology at UC Berkeley, where he went on to serve as a faculty member and as founding director of Berkeley’s program in mass communications. He is currently on the faculty of Columbia University.


Arts + Design Mondays is organized and sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Arts + Design Initiative. The series is co-curated by the Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium at the Berkeley Center for New Media; College of Environmental Design; Department of Art Practice; African American Studies Department; Graduate School of Journalism; Townsend Center for the Humanities, and in collaboration with the Headlands Center for the Arts; Fort Mason Center/ COAL + ICE; Art21; and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.  

The 2018-19 series of Arts + Design Mondays is made possible thanks a generous donation from Jacqueline Jackson and other supporters of Berkeley Arts + Design.

Arts + Design Mondays is a public lecture series with the theme of Fact and Fiction.

Berkeley Arts + Design features, fortifies, and mobilizes existing excellence in the arts and design at Berkeley, while fostering dynamic collaboration, innovation, and public access across all arts and design fields, on campus and in public life. 

Learn more at: http://artsdesign.berkeley.edu/events/arts%2Bdesign-mondays