Volume 9, Issue 1 & 2 — Teaching and Learning with the Grateful Dead
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Item Open Access COLLABORATIVE PEDAGOGY: TEACHING (WITH) THE GRATEFUL DEAD ON TOUR, ON CAMPUS, AND ONLINE(Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, 2022) Adams, Rebecca G.This essay describes my experiences teaching with the Grateful Dead “on tour” in 1989, on campus in the early 2000s, and online in 2019. Using a life course framework, I discuss how my own development as a teacher, Deadhead, and Grateful Dead scholar and the changing context over time shaped these experiences and how teaching with the Grateful Dead opened a pedagogical space for experimentation that allowed the students and me to take risks and to collaborate despite status differences. Rather than unpacking these experiences entirely, my goal here is to focus on how these three experiences of teaching with the Grateful Dead allowed me to develop and informed my pedagogical approach, particularly my use of technology in teaching. Keywords: Grateful Dead, popular culture, pedagogy, online teaching, technologyItem Open Access DISCOURSING THE GRATEFUL DEAD: SCHOLARS, FANS, AND THE 2020 MEETING OF SOUTHWEST POPULAR/AMERICAN CULTURE ASSOCIATION(Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, 2022) Meriwether, Nicholas G.Academic conferences serve many functions but at heart they are pedagogical enterprises, designed to teach, share, and refine knowledge. This paper uses the 2020 meeting of the Grateful Dead area of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association to explore some of the issues and challenges that define the pedagogical and scholarly work of a conference section. The 2020 meeting offers a useful lens for discussing the area’s contributions and problems within the larger framework and history of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association and the broader field of Grateful Dead studies. The experience of the Dead area illustrates issues in conference dynamics and organization as well as in the development of discourse communities, especially those with popular constituencies. Keywords: Conference organization; popular culture studies; media fandom; Grateful Dead studies; discourse communities.Item Open Access REVIEW OF THE TRAGIC ODES OF JERRY GARCIA AND THE GRATEFUL DEAD: MYSTERY DANCES IN THE MAGIC THEATER, BY BRENT WOOD(Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, 2022) Coffman, Christopher K.Brent Wood’s The Tragic Odes of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead: Mystery Dances in the Magic Theater is the latest volume in the Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series. Like other texts in the series, it undertakes musicological analysis of its subject in the context of interpretations that draw on a wide variety of socio-cultural considerations and scholarly fields. For those who teach with the Grateful Dead, Wood’s text offers much on a number of fronts: its interdisciplinary scope provides fresh insights about the Grateful Dead in relation to topics in literary studies, classics, philosophy, musicology, and history, among other disciplines...Item Open Access TEACHING (AND STUDYING) THE MUSIC OF THE GRATEFUL DEAD(Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, 2022) Felix, BrianThis article aims to provide answers to two questions: why teach about the music of the Grateful Dead, and how to do so? In an effort to engage the former, this article examines the ways that the Grateful Dead provides a rich and unique case study towards a deeper understanding of American popular music. The contributing factors are their distinct brand of eclecticism, career-long commitment to extended musical improvisations, and the depth and durability of their songbook. In order to answer the latter question (how?), I provide a framework for approaching the Grateful Dead’s voluminous output from a musical perspective, using their shifting personnel (primarily the keyboardists) as markers for understanding the distinct musical attributes of different eras. My hope is that the argument and framework provided here will assist anyone who is looking to teach or study the music of the Grateful Dead. Keywords: Grateful Dead, eclecticism, improvisation, songbook, jazz, rock, ontologyItem Open Access TEACHING THE GRATEFUL DEAD PHENOMENON AND CULTURAL COMMUNICATION(Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, 2022) Dollar, NatalieCommunication studies is particularly well-situated for teaching a course about the Grateful Dead phenomenon and using the phenomenon to teach discipline-specific content. This combination, teaching “the” Grateful Dead and teaching “with” the Grateful Dead, rather than one or the other, is what produces such an engaging course for students, guests, and instructor. I argue that musical speech communities warrant rigorous study and discuss the role of academic publications, professional organizations, and library archives in this process. Developing a pedagogy grounded in cultural communication and treating the course as a communication event allowed for collaboration with students and guest scholars, and illustrates that a multidisciplinary perspective is necessary to understand the significance and complexity of the Grateful Dead phenomenon. Through reflexive analysis of fieldnotes, personal communication with students, and course materials I located the following themes as important to student learning. First, allowing students to choose their topic of study provided familiarity based on personal interests, enhanced comprehension, provided the space for student voice fostering student agency, and increased motivation to prepare and attend class. Second, for students, guest presentations demonstrated new ways of thinking and helped them understand how their personal interests could be academically researched. Third, teaching the Grateful Dead phenomenon with a cultural communication-informed pedagogy necessarily includes teaching methodology and students report improved understanding of the relationship between theory and research. The most common feedback from students was that the level of engagement with the topic facilitated motivation to attend, participate, and increased their learning. Students identified course organization, guest speakers and the multidisciplinary nature of the course as significant to their motivation and success. Keywords: communication studies discipline, Grateful Dead phenomenon, cultural communication, speech community, Grateful Dead studies, cultural communication pedagogy, student agency, student motivation, student preparationItem Open Access TEACHING THE GRATEFUL DEAD WITH NIETZSCHE’S BIRTH OF TRAGEDY(Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, 2022) Spector, Stanley J.Friedrich Nietzsche published his first work, The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music in 1872 and his last work, Ecce Homo in 1888. In not only these two works, but also in his other writings as well, one of the ideas that he consistently emphasized was the idea of life affirmation and vitality: first, how they were expressed in Ancient Greece and then how they had been neglected in Western culture from the fifth century BC to the end of the nineteenth century and finally how regaining life affirmation and vitality might occur in a post nineteenth century world. To start at the end of his trajectory, an initial observation is that chronologically the Grateful Dead (1965-1995) was a post nineteenth century band, and in order to justify a claim that the Grateful Dead expressed Nietzsche’s ideas of life affirmation and vitality, we need first to understand Nietzsche’s characterizations of the Greek period to contrast with what was lost in the middle period when life affirmation and vitality were underemphasized and replaced with an over-emphasis on reason, and then grasp how life affirmation and vitality can come to the forefront again in the twentieth century. Then, we can confidently demonstrate how closely the Grateful Dead exemplify some of what Nietzsche projected for the future...Item Open Access TEACHING THE GRATEFUL DEAD, HAPPENINGS, & SPONTANEOUS PEDAGOGY(Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, 2022) Slesinger, RyanTo teach a course on the Grateful Dead I developed a praxis I call “spontaneous pedagogy” that pairs academic rigor with flexible curriculum details to enable creativity and engagement among students in a truly student-centered classroom. The pairing of spontaneous pedagogy with the Grateful Dead course worked well because the subject emphasizes improvisation, which initially inspired and—during the course—paralleled my praxis. I had developed this praxis previously, implementing it each semester from 2007 to2010 for one Composition II unit on definitional arguments entitled, “The Nature of Reality.” Students were asked to define what they consider as real and apply that definition to a mythological creature. Utilizing spontaneous pedagogy in this unit was successful: students gained agency in the classroom, guiding our activities towards topics that were important topics for them, and produced unique and excellent work. Following this success, I taught a topic-based intersession class (80 hours in three weeks) on the Grateful Dead in 2011, relying on spontaneous pedagogy and allowing students more agency to determine our curriculum. But something unusual happened: as the students determined the topics for class discussion, they also began assigning themselves additional homework and reading tasks, including their own essay assignments and their submission of their own oral and multimodal presentations on topics of their choosing. I found that spontaneous pedagogy in the Grateful Dead classroom achieved a truly student-centered learning experience as students willingly took over the roles of curriculum and assignment design, leaving me to prepare the classes and participate in them as a guide. In addition to the knowledge of the topic students gained in the class, they also gained a unique experience of a spontaneous atmosphere in an academic setting that paralleled a Grateful Dead improvisation or show experience. Keywords: Grateful Dead, Geoffrey Sirc, Charles Deemer, happening, pedagogy, improvisation, epiphany, agency, spontaneous pedagogy, student-centered pedagogyItem Open Access TEACHING WITH THE DEAD: A SHORT PERSONAL REMEMBRANCE(Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, 2022) Weiner, RobThis essay is a personal remembrance of teaching an Honors course related to the Grateful Dead, the Beat Generation, and the Counterculture at Texas Tech University during the Spring of 2019. It describes the readings, assignments, techniques, and overall class response to the material. The goals of the course are explained and the syllabus is added as an appendix. Keywords: Grateful Dead, Beat Generation, Counterculture, Teaching Techniques, American experience, United States History, San Francisco Music.Item Open Access A TOUCH OF GREY: PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON TEACHING THE GRATEFUL DEAD TO SENIORS(Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, 2022) Trudeau, RobertThis essay reflects on several occasions in which I was a facilitator introducing the music of the Grateful Dead to groups of senior citizens. Several themes emerge: First, there is the need to separate the facilitator’s feelings as a convinced Deadhead from the inclinations of older individuals who know little about the Grateful Dead. Second, an indirect approach that emphasizes lyrics and accessible songs seems to have the best impact, if the goal is to encourage individuals to want to learn more about, and listen to, the Grateful Dead’s music. Third, one should let students construct the framework of the information that they themselves feel they need. Finally, it takes a lot of preparation to be able to improvise in and around the structures students develop. Keywords: Grateful Dead, popular culture, pedagogy