Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-02

The literary movement of the Beat Generation continues to be a truly influential movement in our current society. From the popularization of hitchhiking across America to the rebel without a cause of James Dean, the Hippie movement of the 60s, and the explosion of poetry readings in coffee shops, the Beats have been influential to much of the social change in the last half-century. Commonly the architects of the movement are referenced as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. However, the Beat Generation was much bigger than six "white" men who wrote novels and poetry about disenfranchised youths of the 1950s. The Beat Generation had at its center several women and artists of color who have helped to redefine the movement, such as Joan Vollmer, Bob Kaufman, Raul Salinas, and Anne Waldman. This project troubles the categorization of the Beat Generation as a static movement in postwar America, and redefines it as an adaptive ideology that continues through today's Beat Movement. In this dissertation, I have broken down the three most prominent rhetorical elements that have kept the Beat Movement operating for over sixty years. The first element is the Beat desire to write for the underclasses of America and eventually to produce writers to write from the underclasses. The second is the importance placed on performance in their poetry and how that has changed the face of poetry over the last half century. The third is the ability to build a community through small presses and magazines, while at the same time pushing the boundaries of gender roles, queer relationships, and interraciality.

The Beat rejection of conventional values meant a rejection of marriage, family, and a nine-to-five job, and few women were prepared to make that kind of radical shift in a society that condemned women for behaving the way the Beats behaved. Though she has faced difficulty in getting published, Beat writer Diane Di Prima has been publishing steadily for the past forty years. Di Prima has also lived the life of a Beat, wandering the country, avoiding nine-to-five work and supporting herself with grants, teaching and poetry readings. In spite of her success and adherence to the Beat lifestyle, Di Prima has given birth to five children, all of whom she took with her in her travels. Diane Di Prima has always faced the particular challenge of gaining the acceptance of her male peers amid indifference and hatred toward her sex while not allowing these men to go unanswered.

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Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2010. / Title from screen (viewed on February 26, 2010). Department of History, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Jason M. Kelly, Annie Gilbert Coleman, Monroe H. Little. Includes vitae. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-125).

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Before the “sick” comedians arrived onto the comedy landscape political and culturally based humor was considered taboo, but the 1950s witnessed a dramatic transformation to the art of stand-up comedy. The young comedians, including Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl, became critical of American Cold War policies and the McCarthyistic culture that loomed over the nation’s society. The new stand-up comics tapped into a growing subculture of beatniks and the younger generation at large that rebelled against the conservative ideals that dominated the early post-war decade by performing politically and socially laced commentary on stage in venues that these groups frequented. The two comedians that best represent this comedic era are Jewish comics Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce. Their comedy was more politically oriented than the other “sick” comics, and they started an entertainment revolution with their new style. They became legendary by challenging the status quo during a historically conservative time, and inspired numerous comics to take the stage and question basic Cold War assumptions about race, gender, and communism.