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The Students for a Democratic Society was the largest New Left organization in the United States during the 1960s. The organization gained momentum through the Civil Rights Movement and the anti-war movement and eclipsed other student organizations of the time. As the organization’s numbers swelled to roughly 15,000 officially registered members by the mid-1960s, SDS became known for its increasing radicalism. By 1970, SDS had split into various factions, the most famous being the Weathermen, who promoted the violent overthrow of the American government. Utilizing the semiotic theories of the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, this thesis compares and contrasts three SDS chapters active in Northeast Ohio during the late 1960s and early 1970s to explore how SDS used heteroglossic language and carnivalesque techniques to create an identity that challenged—both symbolically and physically—the unitary language of the established university administrations. Although different in location, prestige, and student enrollment, the campuses of Kent State University, Case Western Reserve University, and John Carroll University experienced SDS’s carnivalesque and heteroglossic tactics at varying levels of intensity. By using the theories of Bakhtin, this thesis provides a new angle to SDS studies and protest movements. |
