The Conference
A One-Day Countercultural Event
28 July 2017
09:00 am
The Summer of Love was not simply an American phenomenon but an occurrence with international and intercultural influence and significant social and political effects, transforming the ways in which the counterculture, intergenerational relationships, class, gender, and race are understood. Thousands of young people ventured to the Bay Area, particularly the Haight-Ashbury district. The media’s coverage of the influx of students, hippies, and others considered part of the “counterculture” drew national and international attention.
​
This event will consist of a strong arts and entertainment component. The interdisciplinary focus of the newly formed School of Arts, English and Languages at Queen’s will be stressed as collaborative research projects in writing, poetry, film, and a number of other disciplines will highlight cooperative learning and community
engagement. Local artists from Belfast will display their original works, a screening of a countercultural film at Queen’s Film Theatre will take place, and a special evening musical performance will conclude the day’s events.
Topics for the day will include:
Vietnam and the student protests
the New Left; Students for a Democratic Society; Hippies, Yippies, and Diggers
​
Timothy Leary
Psychedelia and drug culture
​
Free love and the sexual revolution
Deviance; intergenerational conflict; youth alienation;
​
1960s music
​
Freaks, bikers, communes, cults and other marginal groups
​
Independent and cult films
​
Civil disobedience, riots and race relations; the Black Panthers; the feminist
movement
​
Eastern religion; the New Age movement; mysticism
​
Danielle MacCarthy and Aaron Cummings (both PhD students in Environmental Planning, the School of Natural and Built Environment, QUB)
present an original art piece:
“Flower Power,” a recovering of found pieces on abandoned sites with real plants and flowers, demonstrating the effectiveness of nature.
Danielle and Aaron will also be available for questions on “greening the city.”
Scheduled speakers
9:00 – 9:30
Registration
9:30 – 9:40
Welcome Address
Peter Scott Lederer
School of Arts, English and Languages
Queen’s University Belfast
9:40 – 10:00
Allen Ginsberg’s Poetry: from Beat-Reading to Hippie-Chanting
Elisa Ortiz Barroso
Complutense University of Madrid
10:00 – 10:20
Constructing Leviathan: Studies on the Left, the New Left, and Corporate Liberalism
Christopher Olewicz
University of Sheffield
10:20 – 10:40
Zappa Concept Albums as “Technology of Memory”
Alan Barclay
Queen’s University Belfast
10:40 – 11:00
Countercultural Art; or the Exaltation of Otherness in Wolf Volstell’s Miss America and B52 (1968)
Laurence Besnard-Scott
Queen’s University Belfast
11:00 – 11:30
Break
11:30 – 11:50
Groovin', Soulin' and Lovin'
Suzanne McClure
University of Liverpool
11:50 – 12:10
“Do You Remember When”: Van Morrison’s “Brown-Skinned Girl” and the Politics of Pop Counterculture
Madeleine Saidenberg
Trinity College Dublin
12:10 – 13:10
Keynote Speaker
Dr. Christopher Gair
School of Critical Studies
University of Glasgow
13:10 – 14:10
Lunch
Tea, coffee, and a vegetarian and non-vegetarian buffet lunch will be served.
14:30 – 17:00
Special QFT Screening: El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky)
Introduced by Rebecca Bannon, School of Arts, English and Languages, Queen’s University Belfast
17:30 – 19:30
After Party (including a DJ or live music) – "The Parlour"
Keynote speaker
Dr Christopher Gair, Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Associate Director of the Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. Dr Gair is the author of The American Counterculture (Edinburgh UP, 2007), The Beat Generation (Oneworld, 2008), and is the editor of Beyond Boundaries: C. L. R. James and Postnational Studies (Pluto, 2006).
One showing only at Queen's Film Theatre
Alejandro Jodorowsky's "El Topo"
"A violent, erotic freakshow"
"Mystical, surreal"
"A countercultural masterpiece"
"A mind-trip"