2017 is the 50th Anniversary of the historic Summer of Love in San Francisco, California. To examine the social and historical implications of this event, Northwestern University’s Center for Civic Engagement and the California Historical Society are hosting a three-day, interdisciplinary academic conference celebrating and reexamining the Summer of Love and its associated events, contexts, and implications.
The conference will take place from July 27 – July 29, 2017, at Northwestern University’s new conference and networking center, located in the heart of downtown San Francisco, the city that was ground zero of the Summer of Love and the home of the Haight–Ashbury, where so much of that era’s celebrated history unfolded.
The conference’s major theme is community, exploring how that idea–and reality–was renewed, explored, interrogated, and reimagined in a multiplicity of ways during the Summer of Love. Broad divisions of that theme include building community; portraying community; analyzing community; healing community; and envisioning community; through a wide variety of means and mechanisms, from activism to the arts, from esotericism to drugs.
Updates will be posted to this site periodically as more information about the conference becomes available. Fill out the form below to be added to the mailing list for updates on the conference: