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1968: A Turning Point

Autumn Turning Point 1968 events

Download 1968 Poster [word doc]

Queen’s University is marking the fortieth anniversary of the epoch-making year 1968 with a programme of events. Students, faculty and members of the wider public are invited to attend films, lectures and workshops with international and local scholars and former activists.

“1968: Belfast and Beyond” Now through November, Queen’s Welcome Centre, weekdays, 10 am to 4 pm
This exhibit displays posters from the international protest movement, as well as original documents and unpublished photographs from the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland. Upstairs, reproductions of the Queen’s student newspaper from 1968 give a glimpse of 1960s Belfast and open a window onto how events around the world looked from the p.o.v. of Queen’s students.

“1968: Civil Rights – Then and Now” October 3, 10 am to 5 pm, 63 University Road.
This one-day conference features a roundtable discussions with veterans of the Northern Irish civil rights movement, with Paul Bew, Paul Arthur, Edwina Stewart and Bob Purdie in the morning, and Kevin Boyle, Tom Hadden and Margaret Ward in the afternoon. Keynote lectures will be given by historian Simon Prince and former People’s Democracy leader Michael Farrell.
(for details: www.law.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofLaw/NewsandEvents/Events/)

Postgraduate Conference “1968 Turning Point” Oct. 10 /11, starts 10 am, Institute of Governance, 53-67 University Road.
This postgraduate conference brings together 18 scholars from 5 countries. The public keynote lecture “Paranoia Strikes Deep: Revisionism and the Battle for Ownership of the 1960s ” will be given Oct. 10 at 10 am by Professor Gerard De Groot (Professor at St. Andrews University and author of The Sixties Unplugged: A Kaleidoscopic History of a Disorderly Decade). Film Guide [word doc] Conference Programme [word doc]

QFT 1968 Film Festival, Oct. 10 to 16, QFT
Every day of this week, the QFT will screen a major film of the cinematic revolution of the 1960s. Some of the films will be introduced by Queen’s staff. Registration Form [pdf file] Queen's Film Theatre website: www.queensfilmtheatre.com

Fri 10.10  Soy Cuba (6.00), dir. Kalatozov
Sat  11.10   Ma Nuit Chez Maud (Intro Des O’Rawe 6.30/Scrng 6.40), dir. Rohmer
Sun  12.10  Sympathy for the Devil (Intro Peter Tame 4.00/Scrng 4.15) Alphaville (6.30), dir. Godard
Mon  13.10   Teorema (6.30), dir. Pasolini
Tues  14.10   Rocky Road to Dublin (Intro Eamonn Hughes 6.30/Scrng 6.40), dir. Lennon
Wed 15.10 2001: A Space Odyssey (Intro Todd Weir 5.30/Scrng 5.45), dir. Kubrick
Thurs  16.10   If ... (Intro Eamonn Hughes 6.30/Scrng 6.40), dir. Anderson

A Day of 1968 with Queen’s History, Oct. 16, 10am to 3 pm, QFT
The School of History and Anthropology is holding this event for secondary schools in conjunction with QFT. It will will feature a lecture on international aspects of 1960s protest culture, a viewing of the 1968 exhibit and a screening of The Rocky Road to Dublin.

“Turning Point '68: From Tet to Chicago, Paris to D.C.” Nov. 27, 5 pm, Old Staff Common Room, Lanyon Building
This public lecture by Prof Brian Caraher (QUB English) will offer a blend of literary memoir and social analysis as it probes the cultural politics of events in the United States, February to November 1968.
 

Turning Point 1968: A Year of Change from Belfast to Beijing

A series of public events at Queen’s University in 2008

Queen’s University is marking the fortieth anniversary of the epoch-making year 1968 with a year-long programme of events. Students, faculty and members of the wider public are invited to attend films and lectures and workshops by international and local scholars and former activists. Download Conference Flyer [pdf doc] or see below.

Spring Events
 
10 April, 4pm, Elmwood Learning and Teaching Centre, Lecture Theatre, Elmwood Avenue (behind Students' Union)
‘M. L. King, the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike, and Public Memory of the Civil Rights Movement’
Brian Kelly, History (Queen’s University). Further information [web page]

Respondent: Eamonn McCann, activist and former member of People’s Democracy, speaking on ‘The Echo of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland’.

10 April, 6-8pm
Launch!  Join us as we kick off the year’s events with launch in the Visitors’ Centre in the Lanyon Building. An exhibit of photographs and documents entitled “1968 in Belfast and Beyond” will give you glimpse of the 1960s in Belfast and let you see how events around the world looked from the p.o.v. of Queen’s students.

30 April, 5pm, Elmwood Learning and Teaching Centre, Lecture Theatre, Elmwood Avenue (behind Students' Union)
‘The Religious Crisis of the 1960s’
Hugh McLeod, Church History, University of Birmingham
Respondent: Myrtle Hill, Queen’s University
Was there a religious crisis in Northern Ireland in the 1960s?

May 6, 5pm, Peter Froggatt Centre, Room 209 (in the Quad of the Lanyon Building)
Peter Tame, French Studies, Queen’s University
’“Is it a revolution ?” -  “No, Sire, it’s a riot”:  the impact and influence of May 1968 on France and beyond.’

Queen’s Film Theatre will show two films on the events in spring 1968:

6 May, 6.15pm, Queen's Film Theatre
Milou en Mai, dir. Louis Malle 1990
The film portrays the impact of the French revolutionary fervour of May 68 on a French village.

7 May, 7pm, Queen's Film Theatre
At the River I Stand, dir. Appleby, Graham and Ross (1993)
This film reconstructs the dramatic climax of the Civil Rights movement in spring 1968, when a local labor dispute turned into a national conflagration that ended in the death of Martin Luther King.

Forthcoming Autumn 2008 Events:

- Conference with veterans of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland in October 1968.

- Festival of films of the late 1960s shown at the Queen’s Film Theatre (QFT).

- Public lectures by Queen’s University faculty members Emma Reisz, Brian Caraher, and John Nagle.

- Postgraduate conference on 1968. Click here to download the call for papers [word doc].

- Readings and lectures on literature and 1968 at the  Seamus Heaney Centre.

For queries about this series, please contact Dr Todd Weir at t.weir@qub.ac.uk

About the 1968 Series

This Thursday (10 April 2008) the Schools of the Humanities Faculty are launching a year-long series of events entitled “Turning Point 1968: A Year of Change from Belfast to Beijing”.  These events are designed to contrast foreign and local permutations of some of the key political, cultural and religious developments of the 1960s. Our first lecture should certainly accomplish this aim.  Historian Brian Kelly will speak at 4 pm in the ELTC Lecture Theatre on  ‘M. L. King, the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike, and Public Memory of the Civil Rights Movement’.

By way of response, Eamonn McCann, activist and former member of People’s Democracy, will reflect on the impact of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement on Northern Ireland in 1968.

Following this exchange there will be a public launch of the series at the Welcome Centre in the Lanyon Building at 6 pm. There we will also open an exhibit of posters, pamphlets and memorabilia from 1968. These include placards from around the globe, interesting material on the activities of People's Democracy and other radical groups at Queen's, reproductions of the Gown from 1968, as well as some vintage fashion.  Refreshments will be served.

These will be public lectures, aimed at broad contemporary interests and accessible for students, as well as faculty.