In 1971, the editors of the underground magazine Oz were prosecuted under obscenity laws for publishing an edition of the magazine largely written by teenagers. This essay traces some tensions and contradictions around the idea of childhood within the counter-culture more broadly, and in how childhood was represented at the time. It then takes a close look at Schoolkids Oz and the trial itself, analyzing how ideas of childhood and childishness were represented and invoked for wider cultural and political purposes.

You can download the whole essay by clicking here, or if you want to read the illustrated version, click on the subheadings below to read the different sections:

1. Mapping the counter-culture
2. Childhood and the counter-culture
3. Representing childhood: hippies and the new left
4. The case of Schoolkids Oz
5. Oz goes to trial
6. The end of the counterculture?
7. Sources and references