The Long Sixties in the UK and their even longer aftermath

Cultural Theories Mark Fisher recently remarked that -the Sixties were further away in the 1980s than they are now-. And he's right. The icons of the 1960s show a strange persistence. Not only did the Rolling Stones play Glastonbury in 2013, 1960s-inspired Soul Music dominated the British charts of the late 2000s. And – as frequent comparisons between the 2010 student protests and the 1968 protests show –the spectre of 1968 seems to haunt social movements until today.In this course, we're first going to have a look at what social historian Arthur Marwick has termed -The Long Sixties-, the period from 1958 to 1974, and the political, social, economical and cultural changes that period brought with it. We will research The rise of popular culture to the dominant art form of the late 20th century, the emergence of the -New Left- and of working-class subcultures. We will have a look at the political conflicts of the time from the protests against the Vietnam War to the Race Relations Act of 1968. And we will investigate the slow change in post-war British capitalism from Fordism to Post-Fordism. In a second step we're going to have a look at how -The Long Sixties- have become subjects to cultural revivals and retro cultures ranging from the Mod revival of the early 1960s, the nationalist reimaginings of Britpop to the popular BBC seriesLife on Mars. Seminar für Anglistik Universität Siegen WiSe 2013/14 Werthschulte Christian