Gathering artifacts and providing their own commentary, the students in the “Deadheads” seminar put together an exhibit in Schaffer Library that was open to the public in May and June.
Jason Tucciarone '05 described Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums as “a story of kids, bounded by Zen, rebelling against convention and conformity,” adding, “The Beat Generation was an antebellum period in the counterculture movement of the 60s, but this novel, more importantly, inspired the 'rucksack revolution.' ”
Jack Cole '04 wrote of On the Road, “Much good counter-cultural writing comes from confusion and pain.”
Justin Gray '03 reported that Allen Ginsberg “composed the poem 'Wichita Vortex Sutra' on the road in a Volkswagen bus around Wichita, into an Uher tape recorder given to Ginsberg by Bob Dylan.” (The book bears an inscription written by Ginsberg: “For Jim McCord/
December 1, 1978. My oratory advances on your vaunted Mystery.”)
Julia Maher '03 concluded her
commentary of Ginsberg's “Tear Gas Rag”: “He believed himself to be a prophetic poet along the lines of William Blake and Walt Whitman, and as a gay, Jewish man who came of age in the 1940s, wrestled, as Whitman did, with being different from mainstream society.”