Crossroads: A Colloquium on Social Change
“Crossroads: A Colloquium on Social Change” is sponsored by Special Collections & University Archives at the Libraries and the Social Thought and Political Economy Program. The keynote speakers will be Carl Oglesby, Tom Fels, and Catherine Blinder. This first annual social change colloquium will be held in honor of Beth Hapgood, who earlier this year donated her papers, including a wealth of materials relating to the Brotherhood of the Spirit commune, the largest commune in the eastern United States during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Carl Oglesby was a major figure in the anti-war movement in the 1960s and 1970s. A former president of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Oglesby has been an activist, musician, writer, and co-director of the Assassination Information Bureau, which was created in the 1970s to build a movement for a new investigation into the JFK assassination. His papers have recently been added to the Special Collections & University Archives Department at the UMass Amherst Library.
Tom Fels is a former resident of the Montague Farm Commune. He is a curator, writer, and student of American culture whose work has appeared in numerous museums and publications. Fels is currently writing on the legacy of the 1960s, and is the founder of the Famous Long Ago archive at the UMass Amherst Library, a range of collections relating to social change and particularly communes. The archive is named after a book by Ray Mungo, who co-founded the Liberated News Service. The LNS was a leftist alternative news service which published news bulletins from 1967 to 1981.
Catherine Blinder is a former resident of the Tree Frog Farm commune. An activist, writer and consultant based in Hartford, Blinder writes for Northeast, the Sunday magazine of The Hartford Courant. Her media appearances include Good Morning America, Inside Edition, the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, and the Today Show.
For more information, contact Robert Cox, (413) 545-6842, rscox@library.umass.edu.