The Beatles and the Counterculture

This class examined the relationship between the Beatles and the short-lived American counterculture. Beginning in 1964 with their first arrival in America, the Beatles’ music and careers both reflect and inform the trajectory of the American counterculture until its seeming conclusion, and the band’s own termination in 1970.  In this class we traced these entwined paths by watching the Beatles’ movies produced between 1964 & 1970, listening to the albums of that time period, and reading scholarly and historical accounts of both the Beatles and the Sixties. This course was held four times between 2009-2011. I was an M.A. student and then an adjunct instructor at the University of Oklahoma at the time. Below are posters that Zane Russell helped me create for the classes, and a sample syllabus.