This volume addresses integrating into the classroom Beat authors, texts, and themes associated with Beat writing, generally dated from the early 1950s to 1964-65, when the major social justice movements in the United States began to tear apart the fabric of post war containment culture and Hippie counterculture became a dominant movement. The book provides a robust foundation for discussions of the continued relevance of Beat literature in educational settings.
The volumes 22 essays are divided into six domains: 1) Foundational Issues, 2) Beat Literary Genres, 3) Beat Literary Topics, 4) Beat Lineages and Legacies, 5) Selected Resources, and 6) Sample Assignments. The volume presents a blending of authors and subject matters representative of current styles and methods of Beat scholarship. Literature-focused pedagogies dominate, but course materials and perspectives relative to history, composition theory and practice, religious studies, art history, film studies, and other cross-curricular courses are also represented. The sequencing of each part is hierarchical only in the sense that Part 1 is intended to be read first, since topics in that section speak to key practices and traditions undergirding Beat history and the teaching of Beat writing in general. The volume concludes with sample classroom assignments and examination prompts by Beat scholars.
Back to the Future
Nancy M. Grace
Part I
Foundational Issues
Chapter
1: A History of U.S. Censorship of Beat Writing
Matthew Theado
Chapter
2: Multiculturalism and Beat Writing
A. Robert Lee
Chapter
3: Beat Little Magazines
Steven Belletto
Chapter
4: Spirituality and Religious Traditions in Beat Literature
David Stephen Calonne
Chapter
5: Retaking the Universe of Lower-Division Writing Courses on the South
Texas Border
Rob Johnson and Robert Casas
Chapter
6: Teaching Gender, Sexuality, and Race in On
The Road
Ronna C. Johnson
Part II Beat Literary Genres
Chapter 7: Open Form Poetics
Eric Keenaghan
Chapter
8: ruth weisss Expanded Poetry
Estibaliz Encarnacion-Pinedo
Chapter
9: Creative Nonfiction: Joyce Johnsons
Minor Characters and Joanne Kygers Japan
and Indian Journals
Mary
Pacinni Carden
Chapter
10: The Buddhist Techno-Poetics of Allen Ginsbergs Wichita Vortex Sutra
Tony Trigilio
Chapter 11: Kerouacs The Dharma
Bums and the Diamond Sutra
Darin Pradittatsanee
Part
III Beat Literary Topics
Chapter 12: Drug Use and Beat Writers
Erik Mortenson
Chapter
13: Humanism, Posthumanism, Transhumanism: (Re)Teaching Naked
Lunch
Katharine
Streip
Chapter 14: Kerouacs Bilingualism
Hassan Meleny
Chapter
15: The Reciprocal Classroom: Diane di Primas Italian American Heritage
Roseanne Quinn
Part IV Beat Lineages and Legacies
Chapter 16: Teaching
the Road Novel After On the Road
Jimmy Fazzino
Chapter
17: The Beat Generation and the Rise of the Sixties in the Visual Arts
Leslie Stewart Curtis
Chapter
18: The Beat in Offbeat Comedy
Amy L. Friedman
Chapter 19:
Venice West and
Californias Literary Canon
William Mohr
Chapter
20: Beat Performance Poetry: Ginsberg, Kaufman, Baraka, and Waldman
Deborah R. Geis
Chapter
21: Gary Snyder: Connecting Youthful Dissent and the Global Ecological
Future:
John Whalen-Bridge
Part V Resources
Nancy M. Grace is the Virginia Myers Professor of English (emerita) at The College of Wooster (Wooster, Ohio USA), where she taught Beat literature, James Joyces Ulysses, journalism, and womens and gender studies. Her current research projects include studies of (1) the environmental correspondences between the works of Black Mountain poet Charles Olson and Beat poet Diane di Prima and (2) the pedagogical practices of Beat writers including Hettie Jones, Janine Pommy Vega, and Ed Sanders. She also co-edits (with Ronna C. Johnson) The Journal of Beat Studies (Pace University Press) and The Beat Studies Book Series (Clemson University Press/Liverpool University Press).
