"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night..." Allen Ginsberg.
Before Elvis went to Hollywood and Las Vegas he recorded a mysterious little rockabilly song called "Mystery Train" in the semidarkness of the Sun Recording Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. It was 1955 and you can hear in the song what the historian, Greil Marcus calls old weird America; pieces of an almost alien, naked America shot in noir tempos and rhythms that pulls the listener deep into the American unconscious. This was the world the slaves made, drove Ahab underwater after a white whale, killed Billy the Kid, splintered the Trail of Tears into Oklahoma, and made Elvis’s hips move like they were possessed. From here the community looks at the history of underground American music, Reconstruction and the Great Migration, the sacrificial double, and the violently uncanny, naked American landscape. Highlights: a trip Dublin, Ireland.
Course Schedule:
- MUS 206 - Jazz and Rock Foundations
Prof. Charles Mancuso, Music Department - HIS107 - History of American Life II
Prof. Gary Marotta, History and Social Studies Education Department - BSC 101 - Foundations of Inquiry
Prof. Alice Pennisi, Art Education Department - SOC 100 - Introduction to Sociology
Prof. Staci Newmahr, Sociology Department - CWP 101 College Writing I
Prof. Laurence Shine, English Department - UNC 101 - Integrated Hour
Team taught by all faculty members
