San Francisco & the 1960'S

Catalog description

Taught by GTU/CSS. This seminar surveys the religious and artistic counter-cultures that flourished in the Bay Area in the late 1950's and throughout the 1960's, attempting to bring together both the historiographies of new religious movements (Goddess-worship, neo-paganism) and esotericism (Esalen) with an investigation into the field of cultural production. This entails (re)reading the Beats (Snyder, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Anne Waldman) as continuing an American project of religious and spiritual experimentalism, and diagramming the explicitly esoteric dimensions of avant-garde poetics (Jack Spicer's "radio" poems, Robert Duncan's HD book), painting (Jess Collins's use of alchemy and the occult), and music (Harry Smith). Site-visits will include a walk through locations in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, and at least one session utilizing the GTU's special archive for the study of new religious movements. Course Audience: PhD/MA, Auditors with permission. Oral presentations; final research paper. [Faculty Consent required; Auditors with faculty permission]