| Description: | The course aims to study this seminal decade through an analysis of the most important historical, social, cultural and artistic achievements of the period, specifically in the USA, Italy, Great Britain and France. In the first part of the course students will explore the cultural climate marking the end of the 1950's and beginning of the 1960's in the USA and in Europe (for example McCarthyism and Eurocommunism). Students will investigate how these elements contributed to the birth of a new public sensibility towards politics, minorities, women, culture and social values. The central part of the course will focus on some of the leading personalities of the time, such as Martin Luther King, J. F. Kennedy and D. Cohn Bendit, and on the main themes of the cultural debate of that time (pacifism, new social values, individual creativity and racial integration). The last part of the course will provide the opportunity to evaluate the achievements of the decade and reflect on its subsequent consequences. |