The 1968 events were profoundly international in character transcending any one national
context and interacting with other movements across the world. Yet the way these events are
remembered is often delimited by the national cultural or political experience and is cut off
from its broader international dimension. The purpose of this volume is to examine the ¿memory¿
of 1968 across different national settings looking at the cases of France Germany Italy the
United States Mexico and China. How has 1968 been (re)produced and or contested within
different national cultures and how do these processes reflect national preoccupations with
order political violence individual freedom youth culture and self-expression? How has the
memory of 1968 been narrated framed and interpreted in different places and in different
disciplines? Is there a collective memory of 1968 and does this memory cross national
boundaries? By juxtaposing representations of 1968 from across a range of national cultures and
by examining the processes by which 1968 is remembered this book aims to open up the memory of
1968 to a more diverse international perspective one that more closely reflects the dynamics
of the events themselves. The papers collected in this volume are selected from the proceedings
of a conference entitled ¿Memories of 1968: International Perspectives¿ that was held at the
University of Leeds in 2008.
