Seats still available for Rock Against the State (SLAV-S149)!

SLAV-S149

Rock Against the State:

    The Czechoslovak and American Countercultures of the 1960s and 1970s

F2012: 2nd 8 weeks: MW 4-6:30 pm

CASE A&H, CASE GCC

Instructor: Dr. Craig Cravens, Dept. of Slavic Languages & Literatures

 

“It wasn’t all those atomic weapons, and facing them down, and all that big bullshit.  What finally crumbled the wall was the f*ckin’ music, man.  You cannot stop it.  It is the most subversive thing … You can build a wall to stop people, but eventually the music—it’ll get across that wall.”

—Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones

 

“Did you know that I am president because of you?”

—Czechoslovak President Václav Havel to an astonished Lou Reed

 

Description

 

In 1968, protest movements broke out all over the world—in the United States, France, Mexico, and Czechoslovakia.  This course is an interdisciplinary investigation of the cultural and political phenomenon of dissent in two extremely different cultures—the capitalist United States and communist East-Central Europe, primarily Czechoslovakia.  In the United States people rebelled against capitalism, in Czechoslovakia against communism.  What was common between these respective rebellions was a distaste for authoritarianism in any form.  The rebels in both countries rejected institutions, political parties, and political leaders.

 

Using sources ranging from political essays to novels, music, film, and drama, students will explore the development of the ideas and ideals of the oppositional movements of these two cultures.

 

The course presupposes no background and will provide whatever framework is necessary to deal with the major issues being considered.

 

Texts

Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counterculture Allen Ginsberg, Howl Petr Sis, The Wall Václav Havel, Open Letters Václav Havel, Disturbing the Peace Václav Havel, The Garden Party and Other Plays Bohumil Hrabal, Too Loud a Solitude Tom Stoppard, “Rock and Roll”

 

Essays by Norman Mailer, Norman Podhoretz, Ivan Martin Jirous, Paul Wilson, Paulina Bren, Tony Mitchell, Jachým Topol, Egon Bondy, Martin Machovec

 

Music

Bob Dylan

The Plastic People of the Universe

MC5

DG307

Jimi Hendrix

Aktual

The Doors

Olympic

The Velvet Underground

Frank Zappa

 

Films

Point of Order!

Pearls from the Deep

Woodstock

Zemský ráj na pohled

Hair

Pupendo

Apocalypse Now

The Identity Card

Doctor Strangelove

The Pulsing Heart of SAC