The Limits of Transnationalism: Activism in Europe in the 1960s and 1970s

Over the last decade, researchers have increasingly become interested in transnational approaches to history, and, more specifically, the radical cultural and political movements of the 1960s and 1970 as phenomena par excellence that illustrate the advantages of moving beyond national histories. This workshop will bring together scholars who explore activism and transnationalism in different regions of Europe in this period. Focussing on the study of movements and networks, this workshop will address not only the importance of transnational identities and contacts for political expression, but also its limits and contestations. It will address, for instance, the ways in which different national movements understood (or misunderstood) each other, how radicalism was communicated across the Iron Curtain or with the less developed world, and whether its later mythologisation as a transnational revolt has obscured important differences. Finally, this workshop will consider the lessons this period and these approaches have for the study of transnational history more broadly.