This website is dedicated to the history of Zen Buddhism’s development in the United States and its adoption by the authors and poets of the 1950s Beat Generation. Through statistical research and network analysis, the project demonstrates how Zen Buddhism was closely connected to the Beats. Each author/poet and Buddhist scholar featured here made significant contributions during the 1950s, and this website sheds light on how their contributions served the broader developing American counterculture.

This project was created by Riccardo V. Savo. Riccardo graduated from University of California, San Diego in 2020 with a Bachelor’s in History and obtained his Master’s in History in the spring of 2023. Riccardo is particularly fascinated with the role of the Beat Generation in American history, and it has been that fascination that drove his Master’s thesis from an idea to successful defense.

Through statistical data compiled from personal correspondence, this website visualizes the intersectionality between the Beat and Zen/Buddhist communities that occurred during the mid 1950s and early 1960s. Network analysis programs like Palladio and Onodo assisted in visualizing the dynamic networks and relationships that developed between the Beats and Buddhist scholars. The visualization program Datawrapper helped to illustrate the change over time in Jack Kerouac’s outgoing correspondence that gradually declined over the course between 1954 and 1963. Mapping programs like ArcGIS further aid in the visualization of Buddhism’s growth in America during the early half of the twentieth century, as well as locations frequented by both the Beat writers and Zen/Buddhist scholars.