Garbage in the Garden State

JORDAN P. HOWELL

“Within studies of waste management in the U.S., Garbage in the Garden State is the only book that looks at the state-level institution. The primary research is unique and fascinating; it fills a niche, for sure!”

—Lily Baum Pollans, author of Resisting Garbage: The Politics of Waste Management in American Cities

“Garbage in the Garden State shines a light on a topic that has not received substantial attention. Reinforced by excellent research and an indisputable understanding of waste policy, Howell reveals the Garden State as the center of discussions and debates on the solid waste issue for years and an innovator in a number of ways.”

—Martin V. Melosi, author of The Sanitary City: Urban Infrastructure in America from Colonial Times to the Present

Garbage in the Garden State is the only book to examine the history of waste management in New Jersey. The state has played a pioneering role in the overall trajectory of waste management in the US. Howell’s book is unique in the way that it places the contemporary challenges of waste management into their proper historical context—for instance, why does the system for recycling seem to work so poorly? Why do we have so many landfills in New Jersey, but also simultaneously not enough landfills or incinerators?

Howell acknowledges that New Jersey is sometimes imagined, particularly by non-New Jerseyans, as a giant garbage dump for New York and Philadelphia. But every place has had to struggle with the challenges of waste management. New Jersey’s trash history is in fact more interesting and more important than most. New Jersey’s waste history includes intensive planning, deepseated political conflict, organized crime, and literally every level of state and federal judiciary. It is a colorful history, to say the least, and one that includes a number of firsts with regard to recycling, comprehensive planning, and the challenging economics of trash.

JORDAN P. HOWELL is an associate professor of sustainable business at Rowan University. His work examines the human dimensions of environmental problems, with the intention of understanding the history of an issue in order to devise practical and meaningful solutions. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and daughter.

Ceres: Rutgers Studies in History

Rockin’ in the Ivory Tower

Rock Music on Campus in the Sixties

JAMES M. CARTER

“The research and writing are exciting; Rockin’ in the Ivory Tower fills an important gap in the historiography of rock music and the sixties.”

—Dewar MacLeod, author of Making the Scene in the Garden State: Popular Music in New Jersey from Edison to Springsteen and Beyond

“

Rockin’ in the Ivory Tower offers a welcome entry into a field of study that is only just beginning to flower.”

—Kenneth Womack, author of The Beatles and the 1960’s: Reception, Revolution, and Social Change

Histories of American rock music and the 1960s counterculture typically focus on the same few places: Woodstock, Monterey, Altamont. Yet there was also a very active college circuit that brought edgy acts like the Jefferson Airplane and the Velvet Underground to different metropolitan regions and smaller towns all over the country. These campus concerts were often programmed, promoted, and reviewed by students themselves, and their diverse tastes challenged narrow definitions of rock music.

Rockin’ in the Ivory Tower takes a close look at two smaller universities, Drew in New Jersey and Stony Brook on Long Island, to see how the culture of rock music played an integral role in student life in the late 1960s. Analyzing campus archives and college newspapers, historian James Carter traces connections between rock fandom and the civil rights protests, free speech activism, radical ideas, lifestyle transformations, and antiwar movements that revolutionized universities in the 1960s. Furthermore, he finds that these progressive students refused to segregate genres like folk, R&B, hard rock, and pop. Rockin’ in the Ivory Tower gives readers a front-row seat to a dynamic time for the music industry, countercultural politics, and youth culture.

JAMES M. CARTER is an associate professor of history at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, where his specializations include U.S. foreign policy and the rise of the counterculture. His book Inventing Vietnam is an analysis of the failed nation-building effort undertaken by the United States in Vietnam and how that failure led to the war.

Ceres: Rutgers Studies in History

JAMES M.CARTER

250 pp 40 b/w images 6 x 9

978-1-9788-2938-1 paper $32.95T

978-1-9788-2939-8 cloth $120.00SU

June 2023

Music • Popular Culture

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Rock music, counterculture and the sixties

Two case studies: Stonybrook and Drew Universities

Rockin’ in the Ivory Tower

Postwar America, the Revolution in Higher Education & Popular Music

Post-war Growth in Higher Education

Growing Up Absurd

The “Mud People,” and “the University in the Forest”

Growing Up Rock & Roll

Conclusion “The Sound of the Sixties” Popular Music & College Campuses

“Collegians Shape the Nation’s Musical Tastes”

From Rock n Roll to “Rock”

The Late Sixties & the Counterculture on Campus

Conclusion

“I blundered my way through,” the college empresario, Fall 1965 — Fall 1967

“More Money Than Las Vegas,” the industry view

The campus view

Stony Brook University

Drew University

Conclusion

“They’re Rockin’ in the Ivory Tower,” Fall 1967 — Fall 1968

Politics, the Counterculture & Rock Music on Campus

“Operation Stony Brook”

Rock Music Culture on Main St, U.S.A.

Conclusion

The “Americanization of Rock,” Spring 1969 — Fall 1970

Blood, Sweat & Tears and Campus Culture

The “Americanization of Rock”

Conclusion: “The Campus Has Been Invaded”

Conclusion: “Revolution is more than listening to rock music, getting stoned, and putting posters on the wall.”

Appendix Notes

Bibliography Index