Each semester, Carleton University Art Gallery (CUAG) showcases a Carleton faculty member whose academic interests complements one of our current exhibitions, and invites them to give a talk on their research.

The photographs in "We are Continually Exposed to the Flashbulb of Death: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg" create a vivid portrait of the Beat Generation, a term that came to describe those who rebelled against the materialism and conformity of middle-class America and embraced freedom, sexual openness, and spontaneity.

This counter-culture arose from bohemia, a concept that’s been around for more than 150 years, spreading outward from Paris in the mid-nineteenth century and being recreated over and over by subsequent generations as young artists and dissidents, eccentrics and risk-takers, sought alternatives to mainstream modernity. In this lecture, Robert Holton (Department of English) will consider the photographs in the context of this history and, more particularly, Ginsberg’s “Howl” and his role in the establishment of the Beat Generation as the most significant postwar bohemia.

Bring your lunch, the gallery will provide coffee and tea, and we’ll all learn something new!

Robert Holton is a Professor of English Literature at Carleton Unvierstiy, where his recent research involves an exploration of the linked discourses of conformism and alienation that had a major impact on postwar American culture. He co-edited What’s Your Road? Critical Essays on Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (2009) from Southern Illinois University Press.

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