"Scriptures for an American Generation"
Reading Culture in the 1960s/Reading the Culture of the 1960s
This course is designed as an 8 week sequence of lectures and workshops. The focus is on
readers reading in the 1960s in the USA, that is to say: what did people read, why did they
read, and what role did the act of reading certain, shared texts play in the formation and
development of the so-called 'Baby Boom Generation' and the '60s movement known as the
'Counter Culture', the great conglomerate of all dissident youth cultures in the US in this
turbulent decade: Hippies, Yippies, Feminists, Environmentalists, Human Rights agitators,
New Age Spiritualists, and all other imaginable kinds of deviants from the dominant culture.
The focus will be on the role of the thematic of generations and generationality in sixties
readers' selection of a sixties canon of texts, or as Philip Beidler calls them, 'scriptures for a
generation'. We will use his book as our basic theoretical text:
Philip D. Beidler:Scriptures for a Generation:
What We Were Reading in the '60s
(University of Georgia Press, Athens & London, 1994)
Copies are available from Centerboghandelen. A master copy has also been provided on the
course shelf. The source texts from the 1960s, plus any further readings given as background
texts, are available as a compendium, also from Centerboghandelen.
The course will give us the opportunity to read a number of 1960s youth culture 'classics'
belonging to several genres or discourse types: poetry, novels, non-fiction (New Journalism,
essays (both popular and academic), autobiography, and mystical or religious/New Age
texts). The course is designed to give students access to a large array of texts to choose from
in their work with projects (4th & 6th semesters), '7-dages hjemmeopgaver' (6th sem.), and
'kulturanalyse' papers (4th sem.).
In an introductory lecture I will present the idea of 'generationality' as a concept within
literary and cultural studies, and the semiotics and function of the term 'generation' as a
labelling device in the public and commercial spheres. I will also introduce Beidler's reading
theory in a cultural studies perspective and present a general theory of types of 'difference
discourses' relevant for cultural analysis of texts.
We will then devote four sessions to close textual analysis of and cultural perspectives on
selected 60s 'scriptures'. These sessions will take the form of workshops rather than lectures,
and for each text the procedure will be as follows: The session will focus on close readings
and thematic analysis of selected portions of text. I expect student participation and
presentations based on an agenda for analysis drawn up in advance by me. I will provide a
cultural/reading perspective on each text.
"Scriptures for an American Generation"
Reading Culture in the 1960s/Reading the Culture of the 1960s
Course Plan:
1. (Joint session with the other two courses) Mythologizing the 60s; 60s Readers and 60s Texts;
60s Texts and 60s Writers; Reading Culture and Difference Discourses
Text:
Activity:
Beidler, ch. 1 and 2
Auditory attention
2. Independent study period
Texts:
Activity:
Beidler, ch. 1 and 2; Strauss & Howe, "Generations", ch. 11, "Boomers"; handout
on 'difference discourses'.
Group or individual work on study questions
3. Counter-culture: Hippies, Yippies and Other Trips
Texts:
Activity:
Tom Wolfe, "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test"; Abbie Hoffman, "Steal This
Book"; Tim Leary: "The Psychedelic Experience"; Bob Dylan, "The Times They
Are A-Changin'"
Beidler, pp. 31-34, 201-205, 106-110, 131-133, 113-117
Student presentations
4. Race, Gender and Society
Texts:
Activity:
Malcolm X, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X"; Paul Goodman, "Growing Up
Absurd"; Betty Friedan, "The Feminine Mystique"; Germaine Greer, "The
Female Eunuch"
Beidler, pp. 136-140, 84-87, 73-75, 91-95
Student presentations
5. (Joint session with the other two courses) Contemporaneity and periods.
6. Gurus and Prophets: Mysticism, New Age and Zen
Texts:
Activity:
Khalil Gibran, "The Prophet"; Carlos Castaneda, "The Teachings of Don Juan";
Alan Watts: "This Is It"; R. D. Laing, "The Divided Self"
Beidler, pp. 75-78, 58-60, 198-200, 127-131
Student presentations
7. Campus Canons: Playing the (Language) Game
Texts:
Richard Brautigan, "Trout Fishing in America"; Thomas Pynchon, "The Crying
of Lot 49"; Kurt Vonnegut: "Slaughterhouse 5"; Ken Kesey: “One Flew Over
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Activity:
The Cuckoo’s Nest”
Beidler, pp. 44-46, 166-169, 195-198; 110-113
Student presentations
8. (Joint session with the other two courses) Methods in the BA-project module
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Bibliography:
'60s background:
Joel Makower:
BOOM! Talkin' About Our Generation (Contemporary Books, 1985)
Bruce Pollock:
Hipper Than Our Kids - A Rock & Roll Journal of the Baby Boom
Generation (Schirmer Books, 1993)
Francois Ricard:
The Lyric Generation - The Life and Times of the Baby Boomers (Stoddart,
1992)
Strauss & Howe:
Generations
Th. Roszak:
The Making of a Counter Culture (Doubleday/Anchor Books, 1969)
Cultural studies:
Malcolm Bradbury
& Howard Temperley (eds.):
Introduction to American Studies (Longman, 1981)
Christopher Brookeman:
American Culture and Society Since the 1930s (Macmillan, 1984)
Antony Easthope:
Literary into Cultural Studies (Routledge, 1991)
Mick Gidley (ed.):
Modern American Culture (Longman, 1993)
Lawrence Grossberg
et al. (eds.):
Cultural Studies (Routledge, 1992)
Reading theory:
Andrew Bennett (ed.):
Readers and Reading (Longman, 1995)
Matei Calinescu:
Rereading (Yale U. Press, 1993)
Umberto Eco:
The Role of the Reader (Indiana U. Press, 1979)
Stanley Fish:
Is there a Text in this Class? (Harvard U. Press, 1980)
Wolfgang Iser:
The Act of Reading (Johns Hopkins, 1978)
Jane P. Tompkins (ed.): Reader-Response Criticism (Johns Hopkins, 1980)
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