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The seventies are a decade often remembered with a smirk - disco music, leisure suits, shag rugs, and the self-absorbed "Me Generation" trying to "find itself," a decade that is often seen as the "hangover" of the sixties. Yet the seventies were more than just a time of tackiness. They were also a very traumatic period for Americans that historian Philip Jenkins has even called a "decade of nightmares." Still licking its wounds from the unrest of the sixties, America had to face defeat in Vietnam, the Watergate scandal, a severe recession, and the humiliation of the Iran Hostage Crisis. In this course we will examine the main political and cultural events of the seventies in order to place this decade in the context of the twentieth century. By doing so, we will see that the seventies were a watershed which shifted America from the rebelliousness of the sixties to a conservatism still pervading the country in the 21st century. |
