WELCOME TO THE 1960s PROJECT
“Honoring achievements little known because of when they took place.”
Teaching a large lecture class at St. Edward’s University for ten years on the 1960s made me notice a enormous gap in the literature on the period. I came to know the era was presented and known in a kind of incomplete way; a way different from all other times I had studied as a professional historian. With interested students and faculty colleagues, I began to dig and uncover important things that not only surprised me, they changed my view of the 1960s.
The more we dug, the more we found. Not unusual per se. What was unusual, though, was that the types of human inquiry and achievement we discovered – for example, in sports, the sciences, or business – were always included in the study of other years, decades and times, but were peculiarly missing – crowded out, deemed somehow unworthy of mention – in 1960s surveys. Here were included again and again only the themes of civil rights, Vietnam, the Counterculture, and feminism. Even today, the casual observer finds accounts of the 1960s built around – well nigh fortified – by a startling, almost impenetrable conceit that keeps out all but these classic themes, as if there was nothing else to discuss !
The endeavor unfolding here rejects such conceit. It extends to 1975 to allow the spirit of the age to spin out in the scandals of Watergate and the agony of Saigon. It emphasizes the importance of the years from 1960 to the mid 1970s but seeks to save this time from becoming a loud psychedelic caricature of itself that endlessly repeats the themes most people already know. This 1960s project proudly adds for the first time in one place stories of achievement, innovation, precision, and drive across a myriad of industries, sectors, and fields that make the era truly important and, dare we say, constructive ! . . .
. . . e.g., in ZOOLOGY, sports, ENGINEERING, international affairs , FINANCE, archeology, CHEMISTRY . . .
. . . but utterly unknown because of when they took place !!
For a fuller explanation, take a look at the introduction of the article below, “The 1960s and the Forgotten Man,” and keep reading if you want. For a discussion from the Founder, see https://vimeo.com/645361823
Contact us about items we’ve missed or things you’ve lived through, invented, founded, know about, etc. Will be great to add your contribution. Thanks for visiting.
For the team,
Peter E. Austin, Ph.D.
512 680 1068; peterevansaustin@gmail.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterevansaustin/
R. Casey Gibbs, Director of the Munday Library
St. Edward’s University, Austin TX
IN THE BOX BELOW
published in the National Association of Scholars’ “Minding the Campus,” May 2021
1. Introduction: Why this Ambitious Project?
2. Forgotten . . . Foreign Affairs, Architecture, and Economics
3. An Argument for a complete recasting of the 1960s