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.......