Course Syllabus

Here is the syllabus and the course schedule for UGS 302.

UGS 302 Bob Dylan and Social-Historical Imagination 59520 PALAIMA, Thomas G.

Short Title: Bob Dylan History Imagination Wr and CD flags

Professor Tom Palaima Department: Classics WAG 123 Campus Mail Code: C3400

Office: Waggener 14AA Office Hours: T 11:15-1:00 W 3:00-4:15 and by appointment. [email protected] Campus Phone: 471-8837 fax: 471-4111 Dept. 471-5742

Description:

Human cultures and societies desire stability and generally aim to perpetuate their existing power structures and values. For this reason critical commentary is often suppressed, marginalized or co-opted. Yet social criticism can also be tolerated in frankly surprising ways within songs and poetic traditions, especially when written by geniuses within epic, lyric, folk and blues traditions.

In this course, we will look at the songs written and performed by Bob Dylan and the songs of others that he has chosen to perform in concert for nearly six decades in their social and historical contexts.

We will investigate how Dylan makes what is real felt. Dylan from the start omnivorously consumed and assimilated songs, poems, novels, histories, and newspapers, contemporary and past. He has tapped into the songs of traditions as diverse as British, Scottish, Irish, Appalachian, Piedmont and Ozark folk traditions and been influenced by artists as wide-ranging as the Mississippi Sheiks, Huddie William Ledbetter, Martin Carthy, the Stanley Brothers, Blind Willie McTell, Hank Williams, Frank Sinatra, Warren Zevon, Johnny Cash and Woody Guthrie.

American cultural historian Sean Wilentz observes, “Dylan's writing a different kind of art. He...had th[e] ability to...enter into lots of different people's brains and souls and see them in collision.”

Absorbing Dylan's songs and what inspired them expands our humanity and develops our capacities for sympathy, empathy and compassion for others.

Disciplines: Classical, English and American literature, poetry, journalism, music and musicology; history and social history; public intellectual engagement in social problems and issues; ethics and leadership; war and poverty and their effects on human beings and their societies.

Content: We grow up listening to songs. They affect the ways we look at and feel about the world in which we live and how we live our own lives. They give us insight into how others behave and how we feel and think and act, often subconsciously. Their music helps to imprint them in our memories. Poems and songs contain deeply personal takes on how events, circumstances and social, economic and political forces affect human beings.

By studying Dylan and his sources and artistic process we can develop an awareness of the important issues human societies face and the creativity needed to 'give voice' to observations, laments, criticisms and expressions of exuberant joy, crushing sorrow, existential bewilderment, and the meaning of being alive.

Core Objectives:

The songs we will be studying relate to deep human concerns and feelings. Dylan as an artist has sought out sources of inspiration that would reach down into the soul. He has an uncanny knack for what we might call empathetic imagination. By studying his music, we as students will understand what it is like to be dirt poor and working in a mining encampment, black during the civil rights era, a poor army volunteer in many times and circumstances, a migrant worker, a young man or woman in love, an old man reflecting on the joys and pains of life, an Old Testament prophet, a follower of Jesus, a mafia mobster, a confused academic, a World War II veteran in love, requited or unrequited, and even a septuagenarian music legend and Oscar, Grammy and Nobel-Prize winner.

Empathy and sympathy are keys to social responsibility and personal responsibility. We cannot live properly in the world without knowing it. Dylan's music in its times and with its sources are educational tools in and of themselves for knowing our world.

Classes will be mixtures of lecture and discussion. For 18 of 30 classes one student will be responsible to present the material, having consulted with me in advance and worked seriously to capture the essentials of their particular class and bringing to it their own personal understanding and feelings.

Assignments:

Substantial Writing Projects:

1. Students will each have to research and inhabit the time period and the outlook of characters of individual songs or groups of songs studied in the course.

2. Students will also study the social and historical ‘triggers’ that brought Dylan's songs and the songs of his sources into being.

Students may choose to write their own poems, short stories, or, if musically inclined, songs about incidents that affect or have affected their own lives. Writing Feedback: All assignments except the final will be reviewed in draft by the instructor and then the final version will be written with that feedback.

This course carries the Wr Substantial Writing component flag AND the Cultural Diversity in the US flag.

The 'Cultural Diversity in the US' flag requires serious explanation and attention.

The purpose of this flag is to look at (traditionally) underrepresented groups in American culture.

Dylan has noticed marginalized people and written and sung about them throughout his career.

Here are examples:

1. Stagolee songs and lyrics and violence on the dark side of town Turning away from the big questions, here we will look at sample alternative versions of the Stagolee tradition. Focus here on the Stagolee material, including Lomax's transcription of an early version and Brown's capsule survey of its powerful influence from the 1890-‘s into the third millennium.

Reading: Cecil Brown, “Godfather of Gangsta.” Haymes and Stagger Lee lyrics.pdf. CBrown_Godfather_of_Gangsta.pdf (96.03 Kb) Dylan to Cave Stack A Lee.doc (67.5 Kb) Staggerlee Lyrics 1927 onward.pdf (73.043 Kb) Archibald_1950_Stack-A-Lee Part 1.mp3 (2.124 Mb) Cave Stagger Lee (Munich explicit).mp3 (13.761 Mb) F Lewis 1927 Billy Lyons And Stack O'Lee.m4a (2.032 Mb) Lloyd_Price_Stagger_Lee.mp3 (2.639 Mb) Lomax Stagolee.pdf (529.563 Kb) Mississippi John Hurt 1928 Stack O' Lee Blues.m4a (2.465 Mb) The_Down_Home_Boys_Original_Stack_O_Lee_Blues_1927.mp3 (2.461 Mb)

2. The Lonesome Death and Afterlife of Hattie Carroll and William Zantzinger.

“The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” is a Dylan masterpiece and so connected with him that it is not covered by other artists often.

British folksinger Martin Carthy, who influenced Dylan in the early 60's, did a version of it. So did Judy Collins early on (1964) and Joe McDonald (of Country Joe and the Fish). And later still we have a bootleg version by Roky Erickson (1994).

We will look at the sad and lonesome death of Hattie Carroll and the true life and eventual death of William Zantzinger, the genesis of Dylan's song and its influence upon listeners and upon the man who is featured as the villain in it.

I also want to pay attention here to the qualities of the music and how it is rendered, here in different versions by Dylan.

Reading: Start with 2005 Guardian Mother Jones History of Hattie Carroll.doc; then go to Zantzinger death articles; followed by Zantzinger WP 080491 new.pdf (article on Zantzinger and his slumlord housing problems in 1991); Washington Post readers’ responses to that article; Christopher Ricks on Dylan’s artistry in the song; and Sounes on the song in Dylan’s career.

I have also here put up the original released version in 1964, a cover of the song by the great British folksinger Martin Carthy, and selection of concert versions by Dylan 1965 (two versions, one with opening remarks by Dylan about having written it out of the newspapers), 1975 (The Rolling Thunder Review), 1981 (during Dylan's 'gospel' phase), 1988, 1993, 2002 and 2004. The song is among the small proportion of songs the lyrics of which Dylan does not alter in concert. There is one version here where he changes the lines about the cane descending--see if you can catch it. I would very much appreciate your listening to these and trying to decide why and how he is changing his renditions and what the different effects of style and delivery may be.

Also ask yourselves which version(s) you think are most effective. Also this raises all sorts of questions about morality and justice and accuracy of tradition. Here, in contrast to Stagger Lee, we have a virtually fixed text, but lots of ambiguity. The insights into racism, especially in the interviews (in the Guardian Mother Jones piece) with the ministers who knew Hattie Carroll and who knew what happened to her children and are appalled that the other whites at the ball countenanced Zantzinger's behavior, must be read.

—2005 Guardian Mother Jones on history of Hattie Carroll.doc CONTAINS LYRICS

—Reader response to Zantzinger WP 080491 article.pdf

—Ricks_Dylans_Visons_LDHCarroll.pdf

—Sounes_Dylanbio_LDHCarroll.pdf Zantzinger death articles.doc

—Zantzinger WP 080491 new.pdf 1964 BD Album Version

—The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll.m4a 1965

—BD Hattie Carroll 050765 Manchester UK.m4a

GRADES: We will use +/- grading.

IN-CLASS DISCUSSION-LEADING WITH HANDOUT OR POWER POINT: 20%

At some point during the semester, you will be required to lead discussion concerning some aspect of a meeting assigned topic. There are also three essays each of 1500 words due throughout the course.

FIRST TAKE-HOME ESSAY ASSIGNMENT DUE Feb 25 9:30: 20%

SECOND TAKE-HOME ESSAY ASSIGNMENT DUE April 9 9:30: 20% FINAL TAKE HOME ESSAY ASSIGNMENT DUE NOON May 8 LAST CLASS DAY: 20%.

REPORT ON ULS EVENT 10% IN THIS CLASS THE ULS EVENT WILL BE Lesy, Martinich and Palaima on "IMMIGRATION AND IMAGINATION" TUESDAY FEBRUARY 25 in the Union Theatre

GENERAL CLASS PARTICIPATION 10%.

EXTRA CREDIT ESSAY = Response to Michael Lesy IN-CLASS PRESENTATION on February 25 5%

EXTRA CREDIT SEMESTER-LONG ASSIGNMENT: SONG VERSE MEMORIZATION (SEE PERTINENT ANNOUNCEMENT) 5% May 5

Book in Coop:

1. 9780743244589 – Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume 1 - required

Books that can be read to expand your thinking:

1. 9780393327427 - Studio A : The Bob Dylan Reader 2. 9780062685742 – Richard Thomas, Why Bob Dylan Matters 3. 9781610391993 - Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968-2010 4. 9781605986272 – Ian Bell, Once upon a Time : The Lives of Bob Dylan 5. 9781605989204 - Ian Bell, Time Out of Mind : The Lives of Bob Dylan

On-line resources:

For intelligent and informative commentary on songs on Dylan's first eight albums: http://www.bobdylancommentaries.com/

For all Bob albums, songs, lyrics, lyric searching, and information about concert performances of individual songs: http://www.bobdylan.com/

For concert information (historical and present), set lists, and all sorts of links to other Dylan sites: http://www.boblinks.com/

Untold Dylan = reviews of and essays on every Dylan song, even many obscure ones: https://bob-dylan.org.uk/ A great blog with many live performance clips: https://alldylan.com/

Evaluations of bootlegs, music videos and all sorts of miscellanea: http://www.bobsboots.com/index.html

The greatest Bob Dylan blog site: https://www.expectingrain.com/

Sunday mornings:

The Dylan Hour: Streams live every Sunday, 9 - 11 am Pacific Standard Time. Today: Guest Host #2 Dustin Phillips, followed by Dylan's Family Songbook - (885fm.org) from Lisa Finnie https://www.885fm.org/live

THIS COURSE REQUIRES Attentive reading and thinking, and paying attention during lectures. Use office hours, too.

WE WILL HAVE IN-CLASS DISCUSSION AND YOU WILL BE REQUIRED TO

LEAD THE CLASS DURING AT LEAST ONE MEETING DURING THE COURSE

OF THE SEMESTER.

Disabilities UT Austin provides upon request appropriate academic accommodations for qualified students with disabilities. For more information, contact SSD at 471-6259, or go to http://www.utexas.edu/diversity/ddce/ssd/. Note: students must present a UT accommodation letter authorizing specific accommodations.”

Religious holy days If you need to miss a class or other required class activity, including examinations) for the observance of a religious holiday, you must notify me as far in advance as is possible, preferably at least 14 days in advance, so we can make alternative arrangements for your absence and to complete missed assignments within a reasonable time after the absence. Note: the University's Religious Days Policy is online: http://www.utexas.edu/provost/policies/religious_holidays/

UT Honor Code: “The core values of The University of Texas at Austin are learning, discovery, freedom, leadership, individual opportunity, and responsibility. Each member of the university is expected to uphold these values through integrity, honesty, trust, fairness, and respect toward peers and community.”

Scholastic dishonesty on any graded assignment will result in a grade of F for the course. Scholastic dishonesty includes any kind of cheating or collaboration on tests, or submitting work that is not either your own or not accurately attributed to its source. For more information, contact Student Judicial Services at 471-2841, or go to http://deanofstudents.utexas.edu/sjs/acint_student.php.

Late work It is hoped all will go smoothly with the health and lives of all participants in this course. If you take ill or have a medical emergency (including for mental health issues), please email us or talk to us and provide appropriate documentation. If you have personal or family crises or a sudden avalanche of things that have to be done, we shall try to work with you on rescheduling deadlines without too much in the way of penalty. No make ups without sound documentation.

Behavioral concerns:

If you are worried about someone who is acting differently, you may use the Behavior Concerns Advice Line (BCAL) to discuss by phone your concerns about another individual’s behavior. This service is provided through a partnership among the Office of the Dean of Students, the Counseling and Mental Health Center (CMHC), the Employee Assistance Program (EAP), and The University of Texas Police Department (UTPD). Call 512-232-5050 or visit http://www.utexas.edu/safety/bcal

If needed, take advantage of the counseling services here before problems get out of hand. Or speak to me.

Senate Bill 212 and Title IX Reporting Requirements. Under Senate Bill 212 (SB 212), the professor and TAs for this course are required to report for further investigation any information concerning incidents of sexual harassment, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking committed by or against a UT student or employee. Federal law and university policy also requires reporting incidents of sex- and gender-based discrimination and sexual misconduct (collectively known as Title IX incidents). This means we cannot keep confidential information about any such incidents that you share with us. If you need to talk with someone who can maintain confidentiality, please contact University Health Services (512-471-4955 or 512-475- 6877) or the UT Counseling and Mental Health Center (512-471-3515 or 512-471-2255). We strongly urge you make use of these services for any needed support and that you report any Title IX incidents to the Title IX Office.

COURSE SCHEDULE UGS 302 2020 59520 PALAIMA

1. 01/21 Orientation; First Thoughts Beyond the Syllabus. Who is Bob Dylan? What does Dylan mean to American culture 1958-2019. From Little Richard to Sinatra.

Concerns for Society and the Place of Human Beings Within.

READING: NONE. “Little Richard, Little Richard” “Buzz, Buzz, Buzz” “Seven Curses” “Positively Fourth Street” “Serve Somebody” “Like a Rolling Stone” “Things Have Changed”

2. 01/24 Setting Out: “I Was Young When I left Home”; Martin Carthy, “Lord Franklin”; “Bob Dylan’s Dream”; “Talkin’ New York”; “Hard Times in New York Town."

3. 01/28 In the beginning there was the naming of the animals and the Garden of Eden:

“Man Gave Names to all the Animals”; “Gates of Eden”; “Every Grain of Sand”; “Little Moses”

For a commentary on “Gates of Eden”: http://www.bobdylancommentaries.com/bringing-it-all-back-home/gates-of-eden/

4. 01/30 The discovery of America and what it has come to. “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream”;

“Pastures of Plenty”; “Political World”; “License to Kill”. Jimmy Carter’s statement at the Musicares Person of the Year Award

5. 02/04 Rural Poverty, Great Depression Communism Socialism Bracero Program

Woody Guthrie: “Do Re Mi” “This Land Is Your Land” “Deportees”

6. 02/06 Woody Guthrie: "Gypsy Davey" and "Blackjack Davey"; Stephen Foster “Hard Times”; Dylan “Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie” Terkel on Hard Times during Great Depression

7. 02/11 The Sweep of American History I: “With God on Our Side” “Trail of the Buffalo” “Lucky Old Sun” “Down in the Mines”

8. 02/13 Valentine’s Day: Dylan on Love: “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” “Boots of Spanish Leather” “Girl of the North Country” “20/20 Vision”

“Love Sick” “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” “Shot of Love” “Emotionally Yours” “Watered Down Love” “To Make You feel My Love” Palaima in Isis.

9. 02/18 Dylan and Civil Rights: Death Of Emmett Till 10. 02/20 Rural Poverty and Violence Wisconsin Death Trip In Cold Blood

“Ballad of Hollis Brown” (rec. Nov. 14, 1962) “No Cane on the Brazos” Woody Guthrie “Pretty Boy Floyd” “Ludlow Massacre”

11. 02/25 Michael Lesy on Dylan Immigration and Poverty

12. 02/27 Retreat and Retake: Outlaw “John Wesley Harding”; The Friendless Immigrant “I Pity the Poor Immigrant”;

Apocalypse Near “All Along the Watchtower” and Savvopoulos; Friendless “Rank Strangers.”

13. 03/03 The Sweep of American History And What It Has Come To II: “Subterranean Homesick Blues” “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” “Hard Rain” The Red Scare. Cold War. Studs Terkel.

14. 03/05 Nuclear Arms and War: “Let Me Die in My Footsteps” “Masters of War” Palaima in They Keep It All Hid.

15. 03/10 Visionary Take on Life: “Desolation Row” “Visions of Johanna” “Like a Rolling Stone”

16. 03/12 DISCUSSION READING DAY Bob Dylan, Chronicles, 3-77

SPRING BREAK

17. 03/24 War: Wilfred Owen And “Highway 61”; “Ballad of Ira Hays”

18. 03/26 War: The Good War “John Brown Went Off to War”; “Clean-Cut Kid”; “’Cross the Green Mountains"; MLK Vietnam War Speech. https://www.wbur.org/worldofideas/2017/03/05/palaima

19. 03/31 Dylan Personal: “Day of the Locusts” “Went to See the Gypsy” “What Was It You Wanted?” “Most of the Time”

20. 04/02 Dylan Personal: “What Good Am I?” “Knockin’ on Heaven’ Door” “Trying to Get to Heaven” “Long and Wasted Years”

21. 04/07 Dylan, Chronicles, 105-141.

22. 04/09 Dylan and Civil Rights: Martin Luther King “Blowin’ in the Wind”; "Abraham Martin and John”; Sam Cooke “A Change Is Gonna Come”; “Only a Pawn in Their Game”

23. 04/14 Dylan and Civil Rights: Hattie Carroll

24. 04/16 Dylan and Civil Rights: Delia and Stagolee 25. 04/21 Dylan and Civil Rights: “My Back Pages”; Tom Paine Award Speech; “George Jackson”; “Hurricane.”

26, 04/23 Dylan and America: “Slow Train”; “T.V. Talkin Song”; “Everything is Broken”; “Workingman’s Blues #2”

27. 04/28 Dylan Personal Time and Space / Visions and Sounds: "Tangled Up in Blue” “Simple Twist of Fate” ”Forgetful Heart”

28. 04/30 STUDY DAY

29. 05/05 HRC Seminar Archival Dylan. Meeting in the Humanities Research Center

30. 05/09 Dylan Epic: “Ain’t Talkin” “Highlands”