Preliminary syllabus—subject to change
English 151G
1960s Countercultures in Stanford’s Special Collections
Professor Adena Spingarn
From the poetry of the Beats to the protest of the Black Panthers, 1960s countercultures loudly challenged social, aesthetic, and political conventions. While some dissented to mainstream American culture by burning bras, marching for peace, dropping out, and tuning in, others experienced countercultureslargely through the media. This course uses the rich resources available only in Stanford’s Special Collections to explore the ideas, sensibilities, and media representations of 1960s countercultures including civil rights, anti-war, back-to-nature environmentalism, the Beats, feminism, hippies, gay liberation, and Black Power. Meeting each week in Special Collections, students will examine unique archival sources (Allen Ginsberg’s recordings of Howl, underground comics, letters, photographs, psychedelic rock posters, scrapbooks, LIFE magazine, and more) in order to understandhow 1960s countercultural movements sought to revolutionize every aspect of American culture, from individual consciousness to foreign and military policy. This course will be of particular interest to student activists who want to better understand and build on the dissenting traditions of the past.In the spirit of the student-led classrooms of the 1960s, students will become primary investigators of their own original research questions. Course readings will lighten as students spend more time doing independent research in Special Collections.
COURSE TEXTS
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (Vintage, ISBN 9780679744726)
Ann Charters, ed. The Portable Sixties Reader (Penguin, ISBN 9780142001943)
COURSE SCHEDULE
All Monday class sessions will take place in Building 40, Room 42A; all Wednesday class sessions will meet in the Barchas Room at Green Library.
Week 1: Protest at Stanford
Monday, March 28: Introduction
Wednesday, March 30:
Susan Sontag, “What’s Happening in America?” (1966)
Week 2: The Civil Rights Movement
Monday, April 4:
Martin Luther Jing, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet”
Calvin Trilling, “The March,” New Yorker
Alice Walker, “The Civil Rights Movement: What Good Was It?”
Wednesday, April 6:
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963)
* Response paper due by the start of class
Week 3: The Beats
Monday, April 11:
Allen Ginsberg, “Howl” (1956)
Diane di Prima, Revolutionary Letters
Gary Snyder, “Poke Hole Fishing After the March”
LeRoi Jones [Amiri Baraka], “Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note,” “Short Speech to My Friends”
Wednesday, April 13:
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, letters to Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Peter Orlovsky
* Response paper due by the start of class: Page four items from the Ginsberg collection that look interesting to you, select one that you find interesting and/or relevant, and write a 1-page account of your search. (For this response paper only, you will write about your search process only and do not need to analyze the item.)
Week 4: The American Feminist Movement and Women’s Liberation
Monday, April 18:
Sylvia Plath, “Lady Lazarus” (1963)
Betty Friedan, excerpt from The Feminine Mystique(1963)
Kate Millet, excerpt from Sexual Politics(1970)
Wednesday, April 20:
Gloria Steinem, “A New Egalitarian Lifestyle” (1971)
AudreLorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” (1979)
* Response paper due by the start of class: locate a relevant item in Special Collections and write a 1-page (single-spaced) response that: a) briefly explains how you found the selected item and why you chose it,b) substantively connects it to the week’s readings, and c) suggests two research questions that might come from it.
Week 5: Hippie Culture
Monday, April 25:
Sally Tomlinson, “Psychedelic Rock Posters: History, Ideas, and Art”
Joan Didion, “The White Album”
Michael Fallon, “A New Paradise for Beatniks,”San Francisco Examiner, Sept. 5, 1965
Wednesday, April 27:
Timothy Leary, “Turning On the World”
Gerald Moore and Larry Schiller, “LSD: The Exploding Threat of the Mind Drug That Got Out of Control,” LIFEmagazine, March 26, 1966
Diane di Prima, “The Holidays at Millbrook—1966”
* Response paper due by the start of class: locate a relevant item in Special Collections and write a 1-page (single-spaced) response that: a) briefly explains how you found the selected item and why you chose it, b) substantively connects it to the week’s readings, and c) suggests two research questions that might come from it.
Week 6: Black Power and the Black Arts Movement
Monday, May 2:
Larry Neal, “The Black Arts Movement”
Ishmael Reed, “Eldridge Cleaver—Writer”
Eldridge Cleaver, excerpt from Soul on Ice
Amiri Baraka, “Numbers, Letters”
Nikki Giovanni, “My Poem”
Robert Penn Warren interview with Stokely Carmichael, March 4, 1964
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Wednesday, May 4:
Stokely Carmichael, “Toward Black Liberation”
Kwame Ture [Stokely Carmichael] and Charles V. Hamilton, “Black Power: Its Need and Substance”
* Response paper due by the start of class: locate a relevant item in Special Collections and write a 1-page (single-spaced) response that: a) briefly explains how you found the selected item and why you chose it, b) substantively connects it to the week’s readings, and c) suggests two research questions that might come from it.
* Final Paper proposal due Friday, May 6 by midnight.
Week 7: Anti-War, Anti-Nuclear Power, Environmentalism
Monday, May 9:
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Part I)
Robert Bly, “The Teeth Mother Naked at Last”
Denise Levertov, “Life at War”
YusefKomunyakaa, “Tunnels,” “Hanoi Hannah,” “Prisoners,” “Facing It”
Wednesday, May 11:
David Lance Goins, “Let Sleeping Dogs Lie”
* Response paper due by the start of class: locate a relevant item in Special Collections and write a 1-page (single-spaced) response that: a) briefly explains how you found the selected item and why you chose it, b) substantively connects it to the week’s readings, and c) suggests two research questions that might come from it.
Week 8: Gay liberation
Monday, May 16:
Carl Wittman, “Refugees from Amerika: A Gay Manifesto”
Mary Wing, Come Out Comix(1973)
Wednesday, May 18:
Assorted accounts of Stonewall
* Response paper due by the start of class: Using digital archives of newspapers and periodicals, locate accounts of Stonewall in 3 different publications and write a 1-page response paper comparing them. Print and attach the articles you found.
Week 9: The New Left andFree Speech
Monday, May 23:
Students for a Democratic Society, “Port Huron Statement” (1962)
David Lance Goin, from The Free Speech Movement: “The Rules of the Game… When You’re Busted”
Dave Mandel, “Battle of Berkeley Talking Blues”
Allen Ginsberg, “Demonstration or Spectacle As Example, As Communication - or How to Make a March/Spectacle”
Wednesday, May 25:
Kay Boyle, “Testament for My Students, 1968-69”
* Response paper due by the start of class: locate a relevant item in Special Collections and write a 1-page (single-spaced) response that: a) briefly explains how you found the selected item and why you chose it, b) substantively connects it to the week’s readings, and c) suggests two research questions that might come from it.
Week 10: Presentations
NO CLASS Monday, May 30
Wednesday, June 1: student presentations
* due Wednesday, June 8 by 12pm: Final paper (7-9 pages) on a research question sparked by an item in Special Collection, requiring both archival and secondary research to answer.
ASSIGNMENTS
a) Weekly response papers, at least five of which will be based on independently researched items from Special Collections. These begin week 2 and end week 9; you may skip one week without penalty to your grade (7 required).
b) Proposal for final paper
c) Week 10 presentation on your preliminary findings for your final paper
d) Final paper (7-9 pages) on a research question sparked by an item in Special Collection, requiring both archival and secondary research to answer.