Description
This course will enable students to understand and make sense of the watershed decade of the 1960s and to both analyze and appreciate its enduring legacy for America today. The 1960s was an age of revolutionary change in American society and nothing reflected that change more than American films. Indeed, films became the literature of this generation. From established directors to recent film school graduates, creative radicals challenged conventional political stereotypes and social mores and helped to bring about a revolutionary change in American consciousness. Topics to be explored in these films include the Cold War, the anti-Vietnam war movement, race relations, the counter-culture, and the sexual revolution. Several novels will be required, as well as a packet of selected readings.