This seminar interrogates the Global Sixties through the lens of a transnational media revolution. In the Global Sixties, the transmission of an idea reciprocated with tangible forms of circulation, consumption, and adaptation, which, in turn, helped expand medial boundaries and forge new modes of expression. From translation to transcription, media revolutionized global ecosystems of protest, where changing the world became a mantra for social movements and impacted local, national, and international political engagement. This happened in manual ways such as film captions, subtitle practices, and translative activism, which mobilized local content into different languages and audiences. But the very terms “Global South” and “Global North” were also born in the spirit of internationalizing and expressing solidarity for other places in the world or, often times, seeking shelter or direct action elsewhere. (Take, for example, the 1966 “First Solidarity Conference of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America” in Havana; the 1967 “Dialectics of Liberation Congress” in London; or the 1968 “International Vietnam Congress” in West Berlin.) This seminar highlights the roles that film, radio, print, spoken word, slogans, graffiti, and other forms of intervention played in spreading the message of protest in the Global Sixties, while also documenting it for future generations. In addition, this seminar addresses media coverage, from the synchronicity that stemmed from satellite infrastructure and the live stream (Rita Chan) to the “attractiveness” of print news outlets (Kathrin Fahlenbrach, Erling Sivertsen, and Rolf Werenskjold). Or, as former British Situationist member Charles Radcliffe, remembered: “(t)he media constantly fed us images our own seemingly unstoppable, global revolution. Wherever you looked we were forward, acting, and they were forced on to the back foot, reacting. It looked as if world was ours for the taking: it was simply a matter of when.” Through media, the Global Sixties prove how micro paradigms and genres of protest unveiled a dynamic repertoire of people standing up to systemic power.

This seminar welcomes papers from the fields of comparative literature, history, translation studies, media history, postcolonial criticism, art history, and more to address the ways authors overlapped with producers (Walter Benjamin), media evolved into intermedia (Dick Higgins), and the political vocabulary of protest changed the legibility of resistance. 

This seminar welcomes close comparative analyses around themes, collectives, publications, or events that might include: 

• anti-colonial uprisings
• queer rights
• Indigenous movements
• civil rights movements and antiwar movements
• student activism and activist networks
• countercultural/underground scenes
• psychedelic culture
• music, cinema, philosophy, literature, art
• media and design