American literature - přednášky

1960s in the US – creating a New America

• Students across America rose up to demand reform. On campuses from Berkeley to New York, they demanded desegregation, unrestricted free speech, and withdrawal from the war in Vietnam

• Students protested the materialism, consumerism, and mania for success that drove American society

  • They urged people to explore alternative patterns of work and life at home

• Students challenged traditions surrounding sex and marriage

• "Let the word go forth [...] that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans"

• "Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country." – Kennedy

• a "Great Society" that elevated the poor, cared for the elderly, and offered educational opportunities to all

• Medicare

• Medicaid

• VISTA

• Head Start

• Federal college scholarships

• The Office of Economic Opportunity

• "I want to be the president who educated young children to the wonders of their world," he said in 1965. "I want to be the president who helped to feed the hungry and to prepare them to be taxpayers instead of tax eaters. I want to be the president who helped the poor to find their own way." – Johnson

• The end of the war in Vietnam

• Civil rights

• Transform the culture of American colleges

• Many of the values of the counterculture did work their way into the mainstream

• America's workplace became more diverse and flexible, sexual ethics have changed, and environmentalism has become a widely embraced set of values

• Dwight Eisenhower

• Reassuring presence within a political environment rife with anti-communist hysteria and overheated accusations of treason

• The country needed a more vital chief executive

• The Soviets successfully tested intercontinental ballistic missiles, seeming to place the communists ahead in the nuclear race. In October, the Russians launched Sputnik, an unmanned satellite that circled the earth for three months

• Philip Wylie's Generation of Vipers – a nation weakened by materialism and a generation of young men emasculated by overbearing and overprotective mothers

• Kennedy: The right man for his time

  • a Harvard-educated war hero, he represented intellectual rigor as well as personal

  • an eloquent speaker and an analyst of the national mood

  • Kennedy's assassination in 1963 revealed just how intensely Americans had invested emotionally and ideologically in his presidency

• "The New Frontier," he'd called for the creation of a health care plan for the elderly (Medicare), increased federal aid to education, and the renewal of America's cities through a newly organized department of urban affairs. He promised to extend American good will around the world through the creation of the Peace Corps and to restore America's scientific status by landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade

• JFK gave FBI director J. Edgar Hoover the green light to tap Martin Luther King, Jr.'s phones in order to investigate Hoover's allegation that King was part of a communist conspiracy