Abstract
Jaime Dunkle, Tulane University

Women who wrote, performed, and contributed to non-conformist American philosophy leading up to and during the beatnik era of the 1950s and 1960s deserve to be permanently added to the Beat Generation canon. Instead, they’ve been historically shunted to the margins of American history by their male peers, publishers, and patriarchal society. Until now.

Information on beatnik women is not widely available, nor has it ever been. A small handful of trade and academic texts have been published to re-center their work since 1996, but nothing has permanently secured the addition of women to the Beat canon. “Silenced Resisters” commands that gatekeepers integrate into the Beat canon the dozens of beatnik women who were active participants in shaping this pivotal period of American history. This research does so by providing snapshots of the stories and struggles of women Beats. These snapshots are intended to inform the public, academia, and historians of the consistently silenced and partitioned women who undeniably shaped the Beat Generation, and thus contemporary American culture.

“Silenced Resisters” posits there are three waves of women Beats. These waves show a succession of culturally transformative works that upend the domesticity of women, innovate literary traditions, and reject conformist society. These achievements are why this research demands the acknowledgement of the rightful legacy of these influential Beat poets, writers, and thinkers who just happen to be women. “Silenced Resisters” proclaims women, too, are progenitors of what constitutes Beat, which paved the way for cyberpunk, transhumanism, and ecocriticism. Therefore, the stories and struggles of these beatnik women represent an obscured thread that ties 20th-century letters to resistance in literature today.