2020 issue of JOURNAL OF BEAT STUDIES, edited by Nancy M. Grace and Ronna Johnson
Published by Pace University Press
I received the latest issue of JBS the other day, and thought my readers would enjoy a peek at some of the comments made by scholars in the field. I will post additional comments from the contributors to this survey in the days ahead, as the chance to take more notes presents itself. As many of you know, I am teaching online at CSULB right now, and the experience is closer to being private tutoring of several dozen students than college classroom instruction.
I would like to call special attention to a recent book by the scholar who is listed first in the survey’s alphabetical order. Cambridge University Press published THE BEATS: A LITERARY HISTORY this past April, and I would urge all of us to ask the libraries we make use of to order a copy of Steven Belletto’s book, which devotes a substantial attention to women Beat writers such as ruth weiss, Babara Moraff, Lenore Kandel, Joanne Kyger, and Elise Cowen.
In my comments in this issue, I urge scholars to give additional attention to post-Beat writers, especially women. Here, for instance, as an example of the texts that await scholars is a flyer from an event held in Los Angeles in the late 1980s. “That Which Takes Flight” is a short film that Doug Knott made of a poem by Laurel Ann Bogen. The inked figure at the top of the flyer is by the artist Linda Fry, whose work also appears in the film.
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JOURNAL OF BEAT STUDIES – “State-of-the-Field Survey of Beat Studies Scholars”:
Steven Belletto – Professor of English, Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania
Author of The Beats: A Literary History
Robert Bennett
Professor of English, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana
David Stephen Calonne
Lecturer, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Michigan
Mary Paniccia Cadden
Professor of English, Edinboro University, Edinboro, Pennsylvania
Jean-Christophe Cloutier
Associate Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Leslie Stewart Curtis
Professor of Art History, John Carroll University, Cleveland, Ohio
Terence Diggory
“There is more work to be done on the relation between acknowledged Beats and writers such as …. Ted Berrigan in the New York School. Berrigan might provide a fresh approach to Philip Whalen, a canonical Beat wirter who was a major influence on Berrigan and who deserves more critical attention than he has recently received. …. Beat Studies can afford to ask what has been neglected within the “old” cfanon. What about Lawrence Ferlinghetti? Are we willing to take him seriously as a writer of as well as a publisher and advocate?”
Jane Falk,
Lecturer, The University of Akron, Akron, Ohio
Amy Friedman
Associate Professor of English, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
“I will remain a committed reader of work on women writers of the Beat generation.”
Deborah Geis
Professor of English, DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana
Timothy Gray
Professor of English, City University of New York, Staten Island, New York
Oliver Harris
Professor of English, University of Keele, Keele, Great Britain
Allen Hibbard
Professor of English, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee
BURROUGHS
The anthology Cutting Up the Century, edited by Joan Hawkins and Henry Aleander Wermer-Colan (2019), is a truly amazing collection of photos, text, and essays.
Tim Hunt
Professor of English (emerius), Illinois State university, Normal, Illinois
Eric Keenaghan
Associate Professor of English, Stat3e university of New York, Albany, New York
Professor A. Robert Lee
Nihon University, Tokyo (retired), Murica Spain
Hassan Melehy
Professor of French, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
William Mohr
Professor of English, California State University, Long Beach
Erik Mortenson
Writing Center Consultant and Literary Scholar, Lake Michigan College, Benton Harbor, Michigan
“We have done a good job chronicling those writers and artists immediately influenced by the Beats. But what about those includenced by the Beats today? What is the Beat legacy going forward? Many Beats saw their work as not just literature, but as a blueprint for social action. Are Beat texts still viable in this sense and, if so, how so, by whom, and under what conditions?”
Darin Pradittasannee
Associae Professor of English, Chulalongkorn University, Bankgok, Thailand
Roseanne Quinn
Instructor, De Anza College, San Francisco, California
Elena Rogalle
Doctoral candidate, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida
“(W)hat I find lacking on syllabi (of Beat literature) ae the women writers — despite the resurrection and attention paid to their work over the last twenty years. This absence creates a hole in the history of the Beat Generation as well as American history. … In my research for my dissertation at the University of Central Florida, I am with application to develop a digital bibliography to make searching for and finding women Beat texts more readily available.”
Davin Schneiderman
Professor of English and Krebs Provost and Dean of the Faculty at Lake Forest College, Lake Forest, Illinois
John Shapcott
Honorary Research Fellow at Keele University, Keele, Great Britain
Jennie Skerl
Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences (retired),
West Chester University, West Chester, Pennsylvania
Katharine Streip
Associate Professor of English, Concorida University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Tony Trigilio
Professor of English, Columbia College Chicago, Chicago, Illijois
Simon Warner
Visiting Research Fellow, School of Music, University of Leeds
Leeds, Great Britain
About Bill Mohr