The Hungry Generation and the Cold War University

In 1967, the Beat “mimeo mag” Salted Feathers published a special issue dedicated to the Hungry Generation, a group of young Bengali poets who were then receiving some attention in US avant-garde poetry circles. This article shows that this special issue can productively be read as a product of changes in the research university in the context of the Cold War, as the university increasingly became a site for cross-cultural exchange. While this academic context found itself at odds with the claims to anti-academic authenticity being made by and on behalf of the Indian poets, this article argues that scholarly forms were paradoxically mobilized in order to preserve the poets’ claims to authenticity. It concludes by suggesting that the Salted Feathers special issue on the Hungry Generation offers new insights into how the university became a site for the emergence of world literature.