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Today’s guest blogger is Kim Haimes-Korn, a Professor of English and Digital Writing at Kennesaw State University. Kim’s teaching philosophy encourages dynamic learning and critical digital literacies and focuses on students’ powers to create their own knowledge through language and various “acts of composition.” She likes to have fun every day, return to nature when things get too crazy, and think deeply about way too many things. She loves teaching. It has helped her understand the value of amazing relationships and boundless creativity. You can reach Kim at khaimesk@kennesaw.edu or visit her website: Acts of Composition
Overview
“Protest music has always been an essential form of political expression in the US. And at times of political and social unrest, it becomes a crucial refuge — both for musicians, as a release valve for their frustrations and convictions, and for listeners in need of a rallying cry.” – Bridgett Henwood, “The History of American Protest Music, from ‘Yankee Doodle’ to Kendrick Lamar”
One of the courses I teach is an American Literature survey course that provides opportunities to explore a broad range of texts and genres. As we study these texts, I do my best to teach strong interpretive reading strategies and to incorporate multimodal texts and representative visual composition. I work to expand students’ definition of literature and encourage them to practice critical reading strategies to interpret cultural and historical texts and contexts along with traditional texts. This assignment does all of these things, and so I think it can work for a composition course as well as a literature course.
Music and lyrics are a popular form of literature that students easily connect to through their lives. I have talked about the ways I have used music in my classes in previous posts (see Music and Class Playlists), but in this assignment, I ask students to look specifically at protest music as a genre. Although protest songs are in their repertoire, students are often unaware of their historical and cultural significance and the ways they have initiated social change. As referenced in the article “The History of American Protest Music, from ‘Yankee Doodle’ to Kendrick Lamar,” “Protest music has been around for centuries: As long as people have been getting fed up with the status quo, they’ve been singing about it. And because music styles, human emotions and social issues are so wide ranging, protest songs are too.”
This assignment immerses students in the history and variety of protest music and asks them to interpret particular protest songs. They also work collaboratively with others to read across the examples and present them in a multimodal slide show.
Resources
Steps to the Assignment
Like any literature with controversial content, I urge students to be sensitive in their choices and the ways they frame their discussions. Teachers can decide to let students include explicit lyrics or edited versions of the songs based on their own classroom contexts.
Reflections on the Activity
The assignment draws on many multimodal components: music, representative visuals, digital representation, and collaborative digital composing. Students enjoy this assignment because it helps them appreciate the ways their critical reading skills can be applied to cultural artifacts and to their lives. And . . . almost everyone loves music!
Students focused on songs that protested issues such as:
Many students said that they heard these songs before but did not stop to consider their meaning or the impact they might have on social awareness and change. I always find it interesting to hear new songs and themes they select and add to my own playlist as they share their work.
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