Hey FOT brain trust

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

Here's a shot in the dark for you:

Rutgers has asked me to design a course called "Rebels" for the spring '08 semester.  It's basically a history of culture as a tool of rebellion, starting with readings and ending in an independent research paper (the class, not the rebellion).  To use an example, if someone wanted to write a paper about the whole skinhead/SHARP debate on another thread, that would be an acceptable paper topic.  Students could also write about art movements, the French Revolution, the Boxer Rebellion, 'Zines, hip-hop, slave revolts, dissenting Christian movements like the Quakers, etc etc.  It's pretty broad.

I have a lot of sources but I want to open it up a little bit.  If anyone has any favorite books or articles on the topic (they don't necessarily have to be academic - like, I might try to find .pdfs of old issues MaximumRockn'Roll), let me know, either here or via PM.  I'm especially interested in hearing from any student FOTs - are there any books or essays that you always wished you could read for class?

[Richard_From_CHI]

Find the movie "Burn" Brando stars. Incedible stuff.

Also the battle for algiers.

[TL]

Another great Dick Hebdige book is Cut 'n' Mix.  It's a history of reggae up through the Two-Tone era, and goes into great detail on that world's cultural and political origins and implications (and evolutions), and seems to pretty much fit your course description to a tee!
There's also the whole slew of Romantic lit that led young men to run around Europe in black capes tugging at their hair and "woe is me"-ing like a bunch of Morrissey fans - The Sufferings of Young Werther, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, etc.  It's well trod ground in English lit, I know, but kind of overlooked as a moment of "cultural rebellion."
Or what about all the movements to bring a native language back to prominence in the face of larger "nations" that have supplanted or actually suppressed them - Irish, Catalan, various Native American movements, etc.?  There's always a political component to them, and often a romantic youth culture component as well.  Dang - I might need to design my OWN course to study that at home.  Any recommendation on where to start with that?
-burp-
Later!

[Dorvid Barnas]

Rutgers has asked me to design a course called "Rebels" for the spring '08 semester.

And you said yes? F.   

(I tease, of course. It sounds interesting!)

[Emily]

so this is how you design a course? you ask other people to do it for you? - i could do that.

;-)

[John Junk]

I am a huge proponent of "Rock My Religion" by Dan Graham, which is about Shakers as compared to punk rockers and Patti Smith.  The book Rock My Religion is amazing, but it's out of print.

[senorcorazon]

Jasongrote, you're either crazy or brave (I vote for the latter). Prepare yourself for a bunch of guys coming from the grease trucks thumbing through Rollins and Bill Hicks. This reminds me of an ill-advised paper I wrote in college comparing Digable Planets and the possibility for a Marxist revolution. You might want to be pretty clear at requirements for the project like connecting to a specific movement -- though he's got a Miata full of money, Teddy Rockstar brings up some great ideas when you look at movements that involve resistance, native language, and art, rather than just one of those elements. 

On the art side, you've got all sorts of possibility in organized movements like Dada and Surrealism to artists that lived under dictatorship (Chile in the 70s, Romania in the 80s [see this interview: http://moma.org/exhibitions/2002/projects/projects85/projects85.pdf] , etc) and had to secretly move their art through mail and other methods. There's a short comic put out called "Beginner's Guide to Community-Based Arts" (http://books.google.com/books?id=X1RifdHihZEC&dq=&sa=X&oi=print&ct=book-ref-page-link) which is pretty simple but covers some examples of people building community action through the arts. Sounds cheesy, I know, but refreshing in the approach of showing how this type of thing still goes on.

I'll have to troll the bookshelves later.

[senorcorazon]

I'll have to troll the bookshelves later.

Couple more quick ones, neither very dense:
"Stencil Pirates" by Josh MacPhee (sort of a coffee table book for graffiti nerds)
"Viva Posada! A Salute to the Printmaker of the Mexican Revolution"
and there's a quick essay by Howard Zinn called "Artists in Times of War" [http://books.google.com/books?id=M_4_VwidjhMC] but then again, as FOTers we all support Our Leader as Tom does. Go Leader!

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

WOW.  First off, thank you, FOTs, for all of your time and intelligence and generosity.  I've got an embarrassment of riches here and I'll definitely use some of these.  And sorry for not replying earlier, but I was just able to check in before running to rehearsal for that Herzog/Kinski thing I was doing (it went great and there's a big piece in today's NY Times arts page about the entire event, which is much much larger than the little thing I'm doing - I'll xpost the link elsewhere). 

Some quick individual replies:

Another great Dick Hebdige book is Cut 'n' Mix.  It's a history of reggae up through the Two-Tone era, and goes into great detail on that world's cultural and political origins and implications (and evolutions), and seems to pretty much fit your course description to a tee!
There's also the whole slew of Romantic lit that led young men to run around Europe in black capes tugging at their hair and "woe is me"-ing like a bunch of Morrissey fans - The Sufferings of Young Werther, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, etc.  It's well trod ground in English lit, I know, but kind of overlooked as a moment of "cultural rebellion."
Or what about all the movements to bring a native language back to prominence in the face of larger "nations" that have supplanted or actually suppressed them - Irish, Catalan, various Native American movements, etc.?  There's always a political component to them, and often a romantic youth culture component as well.  Dang - I might need to design my OWN course to study that at home.  Any recommendation on where to start with that?
-burp-
Later!

OK, so before I discuss the books here, can I just violate the spirit of friendly egalitarianism at the boards and say how incredibly cool it was to be listening to Hearts of Oak and come upon this?  I wish there was a way the university could advertise, "recommended reading by Teddy Rockstar."  I'll never wash my syllabus again.  </starstruck>  On to brass tacks: the Hebdige book sounds excellent - I was already planning to use Subculture, and I'll check that one out too.  The German Romantic angle is pretty exciting, too, as I just finished a play based on Schiller's Mary Stuart and never really associated the two, though it totally makes sense.  The language movement thing is also a great idea - maybe CLR James wrote something about it?  It might be too specialized for a general reading but it would make an awesome paper topic.

so this is how you design a course? you ask other people to do it for you? - i could do that.

;-)

Emily, you'd be amazed.  I know of entire books written this way.  But yes, you could most definitely do this, and I bet you will be inside of a year.

Jasongrote, you're either crazy or brave (I vote for the latter). Prepare yourself for a bunch of guys coming from the grease trucks thumbing through Rollins and Benny Hill.

Sr. Corazon, I have no illusions about this, believe me - I think the jerk who called in with the poetic "justice" idea for Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton might have once been a student of mine.   But this class almost always breaks down the same way - 80% good kids who are not terribly invested in the subject but just want a good grade and to get on with their lives, 10% the kind of meatheads who give either Jersey or college students a bad name, and 10% really smart, engaged kids whom I usually wind up befriending once the class is over.  (An amusing aside: an actual paper once contained the words, "...when punk was real, like with the Clash or the Pixies.")  But anyway, I'm hoping that the subject of the class will build upon that last 10%, that undeclared major with the Bad Religion t-shirt who's just waiting to get his/her mind blown with some theory - bring 'em in with Legs McNeil and Michael Azerrad and then have them leave with Hardt and Negri, Zizek, or Naomi Klein.  Or the German Romantics.  Who knows if it will have any eventual benefit to society but it beats the usual research paper drudgery.

Anyway, thanks for playing, folks, and keep 'em coming.  As I guessed, these are completely different from most of the sources I already have, which is fantastic.