PROGRAM IN AMERICAN STUDIES

The United States folk music revival is typically thought of as an antimodern, even a Luddite, movement. Acoustic guitars, camp fires, overly sincere singers, and "Kumbaya" politics are the cliches many call to mind. To study it through digital means, however, reveals important connections between the history of the revival and issues of technology, culture, and politics in the modern world. In this research seminar, we examine the history of the US folk music revival through readings, audio listening, documentary films, seminar discussions, and, most of all, extensive digital analysis to investigate these connections. Working in platforms such as Omeka and WordPress, with tools ranging from Audacity sound editing software to mapping, annotation, and timeline programs, we use the archives of the Berkeley Folk Music Festival (in Northwestern's Special Collections), the Old Town School of Folk Music (in Chicago), and the Alan Lomax Collection (online) to probe what was at stake in the folk revival in relation to American culture and politics; questions of race, class, gender, age, and region; and the strange workings of music-making, memory, and power. As we do so, we ask how digital technologies might help us to interpret history more meaningfully; simultaneously, we explore how both the folk revival itself and the methods of historical study might be crucial to understanding our contemporary digital moment more effectively. (HISTORY 395-0-22, HUM 325-4-20)