The Brahmin in Appalachia: Allen Ginsberg\u27s 1967 Visit to East Tennessee State University

In April of 1967, the political activist and American poet Allen Ginsberg, infamous for his involvement with the Beat literary movement and his provocative poem Howl, visited the campus of East Tennessee State University during a tour of American colleges. Ginsberg was invited to campus by English professor and public relations director David McClellan. Ginsberg’s reputation as an open homosexual and his association with the counter-culture and anti-war movement proceeded him. As a result, the university’s upper administration grew nervous about the prospect of Ginsberg’s visit and promptly cancelled the event. The reading, however, still occurred at an off campus venue and the incidence has become part of the university’s literary lore. By employing McClellan’s unpublished, archival letters about the reading and its repercussions, my presentation will explore how Ginsberg’s visit exposed the conservative inclinations of Appalachia during in the 1960s, and how one visionary professor, under threat of professional disaster, attempted to improve the culture and intellectual life of campus during that tumultuous decade