I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz...
—from “Howl” by Beat poet Allen Ginsberg
After the US emerged as the last man standing from the global nightmare that was the Second World War, a new social order developed. Veterans—young men who were born during Prohibition, grew up in the Great Depression, and then endured the horrors of WWII before they were even adults—were desperate to “return” to an idealized version of “normal.” The rise of the Soviet Union resulted in communist witch hunts that further encouraged Americans to conform to this ideal—a situation that hid continuing problems of racial and social inequality, and which actively oppressed those who did not meet these expectations. Against this backdrop, a group of poets and novelists, referring to themselves as the Beat Generation, rose up against this smothering personal and cultural suppression to assert their own identities. Although the many writers and writings of the Beat Generation reflect a wide array of styles, subjects, and viewpoints, they share a central ideal of personal freedom and the rejection of false social norms—an ideal which came to define the latter half of the 1900s, and whose influence can still be very much felt today. In this course we will read and discuss these influential writers’ works, as well as the profound effects they had on the American—and international—mental landscape. We will read excerpts of their works and examine their impacts on literature, music, religion, and sexuality.