Digital Research Methods: Digitizing Folk Music History

Like Bob Dylan "going electric" in 1965, we pivot between technology and tradition in this course as we use tactics of digital analysis to investigate the U.S. folk music revival, from its nineteenth-century origins, to the 1960s "Great Folk Scare,” to more recent folk revivalism. In this course we will acquire digital skills and fluencies as we think more deeply about music, culture, politics, economics, race, gender, class, and history itself. We will read primary and secondary sources, listen to Dylan, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, and others, and we will watch documentary and fictional films. No prior digital, musical, or historical training required. 3 hrs. lect.