Teaching Bob Dylan

Teaching Bob Dylan offers educators practical, adaptable strategies for designing or updating courses (or units within courses) on the life, music, career, and critical reception of Bob Dylan. Drawing on the latest pedagogical developments and best classroom practices in a range of fields, the contributors present concrete approaches for teaching not only Dylan’s lyrics and music, but also his many—and sometimes abrupt or unexpected—changes in musical direction, numerous creative guises, and writings. Situating Dylan and his work in their musical, literary, historical, and cultural contexts, the essays explore ways to teach Dylan’s connections to African American music and performers, American popular music, the Beats, Christianity, and the revolutions of the 1960s, and more, and offer strategies for incorporating, and analyzing, not only documentaries and films about or featuring Dylan, but also critical and biographical studies on multiple dimensions of an American icon’s long and complex career.

Author Biography

Barry J. Faulk is Professor of English at Florida State University, USA. He is the author of British Rock Modernism, 1967-1977 (2013) and Music-hall and Modernity (2004), and he is co-editor, with Brady Harrison, of Punk Rock Warlord: The Life and Work of Joe Strummer (2016).

Brady Harrison is Professor of English at the University of Montana, USA. He is co-editor of Teaching Western American Literature (2020) and co-editor, with Barry J. Faulk, of Punk Rock Warlord: The Life and Work of Joe Strummer (2016).