Critical Mediations is a two-day conference that showcases provocative contemporary thinkers in the spirit of principled debate. The inaugural Critical Mediations conference, The Fire This Time: Afterlives of 1968, will be held October 4 & 5, 2018, at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at USC, featuring speakers Dilip Goankar, Josh Kun, Zackary Drucker, Maureen Smith, Chase Joynt, and Rigo 23, among others. 

Held in recognition of the fiftieth anniversary of 1968, this conference examines what has driven journalists, scholars, activists and advertisers into the archives, lured by the opportunity to draw new energy from old stories. Through invocations of 1968's pivotal moments, the past itself emerges as a battleground. As opportunistic citations find their way into our pages and onto our screens, how might we revisit the “spirit of ’68” without succumbing to historical distortion?