English 180: The Beat Generation
Course Description: This course will study the poems, films, fiction, and music of the Beat Generation. Rejecting the culturally
conservative mood of the 1950s, the beat movement expressed a literature of raw intensity--a violently original
art testing the limits of creative freedom. The practical thrust of this generation of artists was to rebel
against received forms and open literature to a range of experiences repressed as marginal or dangerous:
madness, ecstasy, addiction, homosexuality, suicide, religious dread. Such are the dark subjects of this
course. We will explore the intellectual roots of the Beat Generation in the transcendentalism of Whitman and
Thoreau, chart the history of the movement from its beginning at the Six Gallery poetry reading in San
Francisco, and study the expression of beat ideas in underground film, bebop jazz, and abstract painting.
We'll examine the relation of the Beat Generation to the social issues of the 1950s--consumerism, McCarthyism,
segregation, and the Cold War--but we'll consider the importance of these writers to contemporary culture as
well. The Beat Generation marked the birth of an American youth culture, a force carried forward by hippies,
rockers, hip-hoppers, and punks--the wild children of the beat hipster. Above all, we will immerse ourselves
in the literature of this movement, studying representative works by Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, Allen
Ginsberg,William Burroughs, Dinae Di Prima, Bob Kaufman, Joyce Johnson, and Amiri Baraka. Students will write
several short essay and take both a midterm and a final.
Bongos and berets are optional.
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Syllabus
Week 1. The American 1950s.
Rebel Without a Cause (film screening).
Weeks 2-3. American Transcendentalism.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance" and "Circles," Henry David Thoreau,
selections from Walden, Walt Whitman, "As I Lay With My Head
in Your Lap Camerado."
Weeks 4-5. Zen Lunacy: The Beats and Spirituality.
D. T. Suzuki, An Introduction to Zen Buddhism,
Jack Kerouac, Dharma Bums,
Gary Snyder, Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems.
Weeks 6-7. Women and the Beat Generation.
Joyce Johnson, Minor Characters,
Diane Di Prima, Pieces of a Song.
Weeks 8-9.
"I Sound My Barbaric Yawp": Whitman and Ginsberg.
Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself," Calamus,
Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems.
Week 10. Visions of Apocalypse: William
Burroughs. David Cronenberg, Naked Lunch
(film screening).
Weeks 11-12. Poetry and Jazz.
Bob Kaufman, Cranial Guitar, Amiri Baraka, Black Magic Poetry
and Jazz People.
Weeks 13-14. Student Reports.
