One of my favorite projects to incorporate into classes is the mixtape assignment. I don’t do this every semester, but I assign it probably once every two years. The purpose of this assignment is to help students think about connections between the themes they encounter in the literature and connect it with other parts of their lives, highlighting the role of literature and art … Read More Mixtape for Banned Books Syllabus
While Ram V and Anand RK’s Blue in Green, as I discussed in my previous post, examines the ways that we use memories to create life, it also looks at the ways that pain and suffering impact creativity and the ways that the pain that the artist uses to produce a work of art remains, long after the artist’s passing. This is a theme I’ve been … Read More Memory Creates Life: Part II
+ he is legend, metal, music, rock, southern
Heavy and dirty. That’s how I describe North Carolina’s He Is Legend, a band I’ve been listening to for, sheesh, around seventeen years at this point. Whenever I hear them, I either think about a hot, dirt driven festival tent with the heat from all of the attendees packed underneath the tarp causing condensation on the ceiling and that sweaty mess dripping, periodically down … Read More Grimy and Dirty, Why I Love He Is Legend
Back in the 1990s, I remember watching MTV’s 120 Minutes and discovering a myriad of bands that would influence my own musical output and tastes for decades to come. Sunny Day Real Estate was one of those bands. I remember sitting in the living room when the video for “Seven” came on, a loose, sloppy yet proficient, melodic song that ebbs and flows from the soft … Read More Some of My Favorite Sunny Day Real Estate Songs
Thirty years ago, on September 24, 1991, Nirvana’s Nevermind dropped like a sonic bomb into the world. I don’t remember what my thirteen-year-old self did that day, apart from go to school. I didn’t even listen to Nevermind till a few years later in 1994. Yet, I know the impact that the album and Nirvana had on my sensibilities. Nirvana introduced me to bands … Read More Nirvana’s “Nevermind” at 30 and Me
Interminable Rambling 