History

Susan Buck-Morss, Distinguished Professor of Political Science at CUNY Graduate Center, and Jan Rock Zubrow ‘77 Professor Emerita of Government at Cornell University delivers the keynote lecture for Clifford Symposium 2017.

Documentary filmmakers Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein return to former East Germany to investigate the suicide of Epperlein’s father, who may have been a spy for the Stasi security service. A compelling and personal account of the twentieth-century surveillance state and its legacies today.

Middlebury faculty discuss life under communism.
Kevin Moss, “Enemies of the People”
Sergei Davydov, “1917, 1945, 1968”
Nikolina Dobreva, “Exit Visa”
Roberto Veguez, “Why I Left?”
Ioana Uricaru, “Ideology and Ethics”
Tatiana Smorodinska, “Homo Sovieticus”

Historians discuss the reception of communist ideas in Japan, East Germany and France.
Nicholas Clifford (Middlebury College), “The Chairman’s New Paris Fashions, 1966-1980”
Max Ward (Middlebury College), “Translating the Revolution in Interwar Japan: Japanese Police Manuals on Political Crime”
Andrew Demshuk (American University), “1968 in Leipzig and the Demolition of Belief in Communism.”
Discussant: James Ralph (Middlebury College)

Clifford Symposium closing keynote address by Mark Harrison (Professor, Department of Economics, University of Warwick).

A closing address by Andrea Lloyd, VP for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty precedes the lecture.

“’Where Do We Go From Here?’: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Unanswered Question”, Clayborne Carson

Professor Carson is the founding director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. In 1985 the late Coretta Scott King asked him to oversee the King Papers Project. His book, “In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s”, won the OAH’s Frederick Jackson Turner Prize. More recently, he is the author of “Martin’s Dream: My Journey and the Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.”

“The Sorcery of Color: Race, Gender and Genocide in Brazil”, Elisa Larkin-Nascimento”

“Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War”, David Schmitz

“An Outrage” is a powerful new documentary film by Hannah Ayers and Lance Warren that takes a fearless look at lynching in the American South. Lynching, the unlawful murder of individuals witnessed by mobs, was at its most endemic in the 1890s, when one African American was killed in the South every four days. Filmed at actual lynching sites in six states, “An Outrage” shines a bright light on this dark chapter of American history, made tangible through the memories and thoughts of descendants of lynching victims, community activists, and scholars.

Liz Kinnamon, PhD Candidate, University of Arizona, will give a guest lecture, titled, “Undoing the Property Form: Feminist Consciousness Raising as a Practice of Freedom”.

This talk examines 1960s and 70s feminist Consciousness Raising as an example of creating positive freedom. Kinnamon paints a picture of what radical feminist Consciousness Raising was; how it developed out of Third World liberation movements, such as in Vietnam and China, and Civil Rights; how it spread across the US and transnationally; and what kinds of effects these group practices had.