Scriptures
for an American
Generation: Reading (in) the 1960s
Bent
Sørensen - Fall 2008
This course is designed as
an 6 week sequence of lectures and
workshops, integrated with method sessions designed in combination with
the other BA electives this semester.
The focus in this elective 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 core issue will be 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)
The course book can be
photocopied from a master copy. The
source texts from the 1960s,
plus any further readings given as background texts, have been provided as a master
copy pack on the course shelf.
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 and papers. Authors include:
Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Timothy Leary, Abbie Hoffman,
Carlos Castaneda, Tom Wolfe, Ken Kesey, Kurt Vonnegut, Richard
Brautigan, R.D. Laing, Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer.
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 within a cultural studies perspective and
present
a general theory of types of ‘difference discourses’ relevant for
cultural text studies. There will be one week of independent study
following the introductory session, where you can work with the
background texts on the basis of study
questions. We will then devote
the remaining 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. The close reading
sessions will be supplemented by two theory and methods sessions,
taught jointly by all the course teachers on the 5th/9th semester
schedule.
Course plan here.......