Radical Politics: Europe, 1960s-1970s

During the 1960s and 1970s critical thought and social movements reemerged with unprecedented force and diffusion, defying inherited values, challenging power relations, and raising revolutionary expectations. This course will survey a set of radical ideas and collective mobilizations that developed in Europe during that period. 

Classes will be organized around key issues and areas of intervention such as labor, environment, and education. Following a transnational approach, the course will bring to light cross-border influences, interactions, and similarities among different movements both at continental and global level.

Drawing on a combination of primary sources, case studies, and historiographical interpretations, students will learn how to contextualize movements, explore their intellectual references and repertoires of action, analyze the way they (sometimes) shifted from the margins to the mainstream, and understand the conditions under which they failed or were defeated. Ultimately, students will be able to assess the complex legacy of that season of activism, which ranges from moral standards to visions of emancipation and criteria of justice.