about.
History Accelerated is an award winning University of Chicago History Capstone Project completed by Jack Capizzi in Spring ‘22. The project uses a series of videos to analyze how these twelve months buried the first era of the Cold War.
The capstone project offers the ability to evaluate the 1968 moment through a visual medium that may reveal more to the viewer than a traditional thesis. I chose to create a series of short documentaries explicitly using footage from 1968. While I ultimately strayed from this goal to discuss the year’s preceding events and consequences, I estimate that 90% of the footage used remains original to 1968. The use of original footage plays a critical role in this project, as the videos allow the viewer to interact with the same broadcasts that ignited public unrest when first aired more than 50 years ago.
sources
**No footage or audio used in this project was original.
Film Sources
Associated Press Video Library
British Pathe
Wilson Center
LBJ Presidential Library
Archive.Org
The Prelinger Archive
Youtube.com
Literary Sources
Suri, Jeremi. Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 2003.
Wohlstetter, Albert. “The Delicate Balance of Terror.” Foreign Affairs. January, 1959.
Valenta, Jiri. Soviet Intervention in Czechoslovakia, 1968: Anatomy of a Decision, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1991.
Johnson Library. National Security File. NSC History of the March 31st Speech, Vol. 2, Tabs A–Z and AA–AA. Secret; Eyes Only.
Herring, George C., “Tet and the Crisis of Hegemony,” 1968: The World Transformed, Washington, DC: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Schmitz, David F. The Tet Offensive: Politics, War, and Public Opinion. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005.
Symington to General J.P. McConnell, Aug. 8, 1967, J.P. McConnell Collection, U.S. Air Force Historical Research Center, Maxwell Air Base, Ala.
Westad, Odd Arne. “The New International History of the Cold War: Three (Possible) Paradigms.” Diplomatic History. Vol. 24, No. 4. Fall, 2000.
Vaculik, Ludvik. “Two Thousand Words.” May 27, 1968.
points of contact.
Please direct any specific questions regarding this project to the following:
Jack Capizzi
capizzi@uchicago.edu
615-974-6945