Review: JAm It! issue 2 2019

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We’re glad to share our review on the second issue of the journal JAmIt!. The name of the publication stands for Journal of American Studies in Italy, being a multilingual, international, peer-reviewed annual journal with a focus on American Studies, both in Italy and abroad, with a multidisciplinary approach. The journal is based at Università di Torino and it is sponsored by AISNA (Associazione Italiana di Studi Nord Americani).

JAmIt! has devoted its second number to the study and analysis of the revolutionary movements related with 1968 and the Global Sixties. The so-called Revolution of 1968 occurred because of the rise of democratic values and consciousness around the world that insisted on a new sense of civic and republican duty. In this sense, Rethinking 1968 and the Global Sixties does not only try to make a contribution on what the Sixties mean nowadays, but also attempts to echo some of the ideas that those changing times helped disseminate around the world. The issue begins by recalling one of the original aims of the journal: “reshuffling oxidized practices and arbitrary academic hierarchies.” Faithful to these values, the result of this issue is a combination of dialogues between early-career scholars and established researchers, comprising a complete and useful study of the mentioned period from the cultural, historical, literary and sociological point of view.
The first part of these essays highlights the continuity between the knowledge of revolution of 1968 and that of our days, disseminated through the internet. This is followed by a section characterized by the perspective of academic literature point, with an up-to-date review of the historiographical literature around 1968 analyzing the role of historians and their projections, while stressing at the same time the legacy of the social movements of the 1960s in the United States. The second part of the issue is aimed to give a sample of the variety of topics which characterize the current research of American Studies graduate students on the ‘long 1960s’ decade and its legacy. To do so, three essays—dealing with three different fields of knowledge—were chosen from a selection of papers presented at the 1st AISNA Graduates Conference.
All in all, the second issue of JAmIT serves its purpose. Aiming at offering an interdisciplinary connection of practices, methods, and forms through time and space, JAmIT accomplishes its goal of reflecting the diverse movements of the 1960s and their utility for early career Americanists as ‘usable past’, while proving that the legacy of 1968 is still very present in our times.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCE
Marta Gara and Virginia Pignagnoli eds. 2019. JAmIT 2: Rethinking 1968 and the Global Sixties. http://www.ojs.unito.it/index.php/jamit/issue/view/309

SUGGESTED CITATION: Bustillo, Daniel. 2020. Review of Rethinking 1968 and the Global Sixties, Jam It! 14. PopMeC Research Blog. Published March 5, 2020. https://popmec.hypotheses.org/category/blogposts.