COLUMBIA 1968

This undergraduate seminar examines the social, political, and cultural transformations of the 1960s through the lens of local history. The course is centered on the student and community protests that took place at Columbia University and in Morningside Heights in 1968. Scholarly and popular histories have underscored the ways 1968 was a watershed moment in the history of the 20th century. Although the protest is one of the touchstone events from the year and the decade, reliable historical treatment is still lacking. This class encourages students to examine and craft histories of the university and the surrounding community in this period. Designed to work in tandem with the “Columbia and Slavery” course, this course is a public-facing seminar designed to empower students to open up a discussion of all the issues connected with the protests, its global, national, and local context, and its aftermath. The course aims to raise questions, elicit curiosity, and encourage students and those interested in Columbia and Morningside Heights history to investigate one of the most important events to take place in the university’s history. The recent 50th anniversary of those events, and the availability of new sources & publications on the protests, have presented opportunities to prompt fresh answers to old questions: What were the factors that led to the protests? How did student and community mobilization shape, and were shaped by, national and international forces? What are the local, national, and international legacies of Columbia 1968? The recent graduate student strike is a very tangible legacy of the protests. This seminar is part of an on-going, multiyear effort to grapple with such questions and to share our findings with the Columbia community and beyond.  Working independently, students will define and pursue individual research projects.  Working together, the class will create digital visualizationsof these projects.

Course Objectives:

1.     To explore, document, and contextualize the Columbia/Morningside Heights protests of 1968.

2.     To practice the “historian’s craft” by conducting research, analyzing primary material, and making coherent arguments based on an interrogation of evidence.

3.     To analyze, engage in, and reflect on the relationship between archival research and the produ