ENG 232 Bob Dylan
America's greatest singer-songwriter, winner of the Nobel prize for literature, Bob Dylan contains multitudes. There's Dylan, the social critic, crafting songs about systemic racism and global warming before those phrases had even been coined; Dylan, the surrealist poet, words-drunk spawn of Ginsberg and Rimbaud; Dylan, the balladeer of the American folk tradition; Dylan, the country crooner, the angry Christian prophet, the lonesome hobo drifter unlucky in love. For three weeks we will listen intently to all these Dylans (and more) and talk about what his songs make us think and feel, and we will watch some marvelous films based on his music: Don't Look Back, No Direction Home, Masked and Anonymous, I'm Not There. The final project for the course may be a research or analytical paper, a creative work, or a performance piece.