JRN 322 Alternative & Underground Press

This course is dedicated to the study and discussion of alternative media focused on the era of counterculture (1956-1974). While New York's Village Voice founded in the 1950s is often cited as the model for what was to follow, we comprehend the massive diversity and momentum alternative media gained in the 1960s, and how the influence of this era has reverberated over the decades and into the digital age. The counterculture era contributed to a model for journalism for bringing a wider range of diversity to newsstands by way of not only covering the interests and concerns of human rights and identity movements but also in providing these communities with alternative models of production, distribution, and financing. We explore the lifestyle, political and cultural agendas of such publications as California's L.A. Free Press and London's International Times, and how subject matter and aesthetics from these influential publications crossed over into more mainstream publications such as Rolling Stone, Spin, Playboy, MS as well as established mass syndicated periodicals. One of the main challenges will be to bring Czech and American contexts into the conversation. The cultures were divergent, yet with some connection points (new sensibility, sacred presence, alternatives to technocratic knowledge, and investigation of extra intellectual forces).