1950s > The Beats
The Beats
By the late 1950s, the rising generation began to rankle under the comfortable conventionalities their war-shaken parents had so carefully reconstructed. But if "middlebrow" had lost its luster, Humanities A had not. Inspired by the romantic poets they had encountered in the classrooms of Lionel Trilling and Mark van Doren, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac embarked on their own epic exploration of America's unconscious currents. In such works as Howl and On the Road, they became known as "the Beats" and ushered in the counterculture.
Mark Van Doren
Mark Van Doren joined the Columbia University faculty in 1920, having been preceded by his brother Carl. Mark Van Doren went on to become one of Columbia's greatest teachers and a "legendary classroom presence"; he became a full professor in 1942, and taught English until 1959, at which point he became Professor Emeritus until his death in 1972. His students at Columbia included the Beat poets and writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.
