Tag Archives: pedagogy

The World Regional Geography Song List: Spring 2020

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Another semester of Intro World Regional Geography/Globalization = another set of musical geography papers. I always look forward to assigning this piece, and the variety of songs that students analysed always produces a few surprises. I was also fortunate to learn about a few new (to me) artists like Mr. Vegas, and the amazingly-named Tropical Fuck Storm (TFS), and Declan McKenna.

tenor

The almost-full list is below, with any multiple submissions in parenthesis. I would make a Spotify playlist if I used Spotify, but you can find any of these in good quality on various online platforms. It bears mentioning, too, that almost every track is available on vinyl in some form from your local/regional record shop, who are likely suffering right now and subsisting on mail orders.

  • “America: Fuck Yeah!” from Team America: World Police
  • Gordon Lightfoot – “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” (2)
  • Sean Kingston feat. Nicki Minaj – “Letting Go”
  • Mukesh – “Chhodo Kal Ki Baatein”
  • Evan Legler – “Michigan”
  • The Monkees – “Pleasant Valley Sunday”
  • Pink Floyd – “San Tropez”
  • Kendrick Lamar – “Compton”
  • The Veronicas – “Change the World”
  • Men at Work – “Down Under”
  • Kid Rock – “Detroit, Michigan”
  • Declan McKenna – “Brazil”
  • Jay-Z feat. Alicia Keys – “Empire State of Mind” (3)
  • NWA – “Fuck Tha Police”
  • Yusuf Lateef – “Eastern Market”
  • Alabama – “If You’re Gonna Play in Texas (You Gotta have a Fiddle in the Band)”
  • The Arcade Fire – “Here Comes the Night Time”
  • Lee Greenwood – “God Bless the U.S.A.”
  • Glen Campbell – “Southern Nights”
  • LCD Soundsystem – “New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down”
  • Marvin Gaye – “What’s Going On”
  • Lefty Frizzell – “Saginaw, Michigan”
  • The Beatles – “Back in the U.S.S.R.”
  • Tropical Fuck Storm – “You Let My Tyres Down”
  • John Denver – “Take Me Home, Country Roads”
  • Mr. Vegas – “The Voices of Sweet Jamaica”

A Pair of Geography Playlists for your Monday

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Happy Monday, and Happy Finals Week (depending on where you are) everyone. I’ve been fortunate to bring some fun subjects into what’s normally a stressful time for students and faculty alike.

My Globalization class (GEO 121) submitted their 4th paper, which required that they pick a song and pick apart its geographical references. My North American regional class (GEO 350) had a group zine semester project, which they are just submitting today. One group, who focused mainly on the American Southeast, did a zine devoted to music and region. Despite their thwarted attempts to burn a mix CD, they were still able to share their playlist with the class, which I’m passing along here.

GEO 121 Musical Geography Paper Class Playlist

  1. King 180 – ‘I Ain’t Goin’ Back Again’
  2. Sufjan Stevens – ‘Oh Detroit, Life Up Your Weary Head! (Rebuild! Restore! Reconsider!)
  3. Jason Aldean – ‘Crazy Town’
  4. Gordon Lightfoot – ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’
  5. Rise Against – ‘Help is On the Way’
  6. Kid Rock – ‘All Summer Long’
  7. Toto – ‘Africa’
  8. John Denver – ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’
  9. The Kinks – ‘Waterloo Sunset’
  10. Israel Kamakawiwo’ole – ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’
  11. Nelly – ‘King’s Highway’
  12. The Manao Company – ‘Drop Baby Drop’
  13. Men at Work – ‘Down Under’
  14. Eminem, Royce da 5’9″, Big Sean, Danny Brown, Dej Loaf, Trick Trick – ‘Detroit vs. Everybody’
  15. U2 – ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’
  16. Logic – ‘Everybody’
  17. Lynyrd Skynyrd – ‘Sweet Home Alabama’
  18. Ray Charles – ‘Georgia on my Mind’
  19. We are the World 25 for Haiti
  20. The Hold Steady – ‘Confusion in the Marketplace’
  21. Arkells – ‘Michigan Left’
  22. Alan Jackson & Jimmy Buffett – ‘It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere’
  23. Highly Suspect – ‘Serotonia’
  24. The Specials – ‘Ghost Town’
  25. Jason Aldean – “Fly Over States’
  26. Shakira – ‘Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)’
  27. The HU – ‘Wolf Totem’
  28. OutKast – ‘ATLiens’
  29. Red Hot Chili Peppers – ‘Especially in Michigan’
  30. Panic! at the Disco – ‘Vegas Lights’
  31. Kid Rock – ‘Detroit, Michigan’
  32. Drake – ‘Know Yourself’
  33. John Denver – ‘Rocky Mountain High’
  34. Jim Jones ft. Fat Joe – ‘NYC’
  35. ‘Tear Me Down’ from “Hedwig & the Angry Inch”
  36. Tony Bennett – ‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco’
  37. Jack White – ‘Just One Drink’
  38. Jay-Z feat. Alicia Keys – ‘Empire State of Mind’

GEO 350 Group Project Playlist

  1. OutKast – “Ms. Jackson” (oooooh)
  2. Lil’ Jon – “Snap Yo Fingers”
  3. Wes Montgomery – “West Coast Blues”
  4. Blind Blake – “West Coast Blues”
  5. Blind Willie McTell – “Statesboro Blues”
  6. Mississippi Fred McDowell – “You Gotta Move”
  7. Garth Brooks – “Friends in Low Places’
  8. Johnny Cash – “Ring of Fire”
  9. Randy Travis – “Forever and Ever, Amen”
  10. Louis Armstrong – “What a Wonderful World”
  11. Nina Simone – “Backlash Blues” (Live at Montreaux 1976)
  12. Nina Simone – “Backlash Blues”
  13. Joe Hertler (CMU alum) & the Rainbow Seekers – “Evening Coffee’
  14. The Velvet Monkeys – “The Creeper”
  15. Scream – “Caffeine Dream”
  16. Fugazi – “Waiting Room”
  17. Charlie Daniels Band – “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”
  18. Lynyrd Skynyrd – “Sweet Home Alabama”
  19. The Allman Brothers – “Midnight Rider”

My Classes for Summer Session I (May 31 – July 6)

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I’m pleased to announce that I will be teaching a pair of classes for Session I (May 31 through July 6th) at UTK this Summer. They will be GEOG 344 (Population Geography), which I taught this past Fall, and GEOG 361 (Regional Dynamics of the US and Canada), which I’ve never taught.

GEOG344ad copy

I’ll copy and paste the description I originally posted late last summer in anticipation of Population Geography:

Earth’s population is at a point now where it’s (1) impossible to ignore the effects of the Anthropocene and (2) at a general tipping point in terms of humanity, resources, and our role as active agents in the Earth’s reproduction. Also, to phrase it less academically, 7 BILLION PEOPLE DEAR GOD HOW DID THIS HAPPEN!? This class effectively answers that question and discusses this crucial crossroads at which the human race has found itself. We will be discussing population science and why humans do the crazy things they do just to survive depending on their place in the world.

GEOG361ad copy

How does one advertise a class about something so broad as “regional dynamics?” Well, one uses food, of course. No barometer of regional culture, particularly noctural, is more universally appealing. I made sure to include options here that were vegetarian and vegan in addition to the sheer excesses of a couple. Can you identify all of the foods pictured here? From the top, we have a plate of street tacos, found all over North America (anywhere lucky to have a reasonable taco truck, at least). Next down is doubles, a wonderful Trinidadian street food found in Caribbean-heavy regions like South Florida and (hopefully) Gulf Coast cities like New Orleans…this April. (Full disclosure: I haven’t had doubles since being in San Fernando two years ago this week and I’m seriously overdue for some). Next down, you see a pile of poutine, served uncharacteristically on a plate and not in a box or some kind of hutch out of a trailer in downtown Montreal, but I will let that slide. Next, a Los Angeles street dog, piled high with roasted peppers and onions as only several dozen of LA’s best sidewalk sausage roasters can roast them. They taste especially fantastic wandering out of a show in Echo Park or a game at Dodger Stadium. Last but not least, there’s a full cheese pizza from Pepe’s in New Haven, captured in the brief moment when it lands on a table before being pulled apart mercilessly by the consumers. Each of them will inhale piece after piece, wondering why time seems to be standing still. Before they even notice how much pizza they’ve eaten, it’s gone, just a pile of grease and charred dough flakes lining the wax paper, remnants that suggest there was once a large pizza in that spot. So ends a typical scene in North America’s greatest pizzeria, a mere twenty-minute walk from Modern Apizza, North America’s second-greatest pizzeria (but where you’ll probably get a table faster).

Anyway, take GEOG 361 if you’re around for the summer session, and we’ll talk about regional street foods as well as many other exhaustively researched cultural geographies.

Regional Music (and) Geography 101

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Now that it’s the summertime (academically, at least), I have a little bit of time to clean house and post some material that I’ve been gathering for the past few months. Thank you to those of you who’ve been following these postings for any longer than that. I wouldn’t have chosen geography if I wasn’t highly passionate about it outside of school in the first place, and this site gives me a chance to explain just why I am, in however many words. Occasionally (actually, surprisingly often, which I love) I get opportunities to dig into subjects like music, film, and the pale of popular culture to highlight geography’s relevance within the context of teaching it. Other than the fantastic ‘Back to the Future’ panel we had on Saturday, one of the highlights to this year’s AAG meeting was the first annual GeoSlam, an open-ended session where geographers of all stripes were invited and encouraged to share just what it was that drove them into the field. This came as a much-expected breath of fresh air in an environment that discourages us from injecting the subjective into our work. Until a certain point that our elders easily remember, the mere inclusion of an “I” would subject an article to rejection (this may still apply to some journals; thankfully, I couldn’t name them off the top of my head).

For my first two semesters teaching Geography 101, I assigned a paper about regionalism in music. My instructions are rather thorough; students are to select any song, from anywhere, that pick apart the geographic references inherent. What does the song teach us about that region? What about the songwriter influenced the regionalism in the song?Today, some argue that music is losing its sense of place. I argue that sense of place in music is more important than ever precisely because it’s perpetually easier for music to be placeless if it wants to be. I don’t begrudge bands for “Brooklynizing” (or, if we’re going to be blunt, watering down) their sound if they can still make a decent record.

This was hardly the first time music had been used to teach entry-level geography, and not even the first time a paper of this nature had been assigned (see Sarah Smiley and Chris Post’s excellent pedagogy article on “Using Popular Music to Teach the Geography of the United States and Canada” in Journal of Geography 113: 238–246). But I wanted to pose this question to students in Knoxville for a variety of reasons. Primarily, I wanted to give my students the opportunity to explore the geography of their own tastes through  a relatively open-ended, laid back assignment to counterpoint the excessive stress of the end of the semester. Geography can be everywhere, even in ostensibly mindless lyrics to your favorite song on the radio. The only restriction was (initially) no “Rocky Top” and no “Wagon Wheel.” I understand that these songs are overloaded with localisms pertinent to where we all sit, but I want students to step out of their comfort zone a bit. Also, the TA’s and I don’t want to have to read 100 papers about the same songs. I invited students to use other songs by Dolly Parton or the Oak Ridge Boys (whose name is a very literal regionalism in itself) if they would prefer. My mistake here, though, did not consider just how many students would turn in papers on Marc Cohen’s 1991 aural cardboard “Walking in Memphis.” That song did become a fun running joke among my staff and I, but I did add it to the ‘banned’ list for the spring semester, mainly because it’s a terrible song, but also because it misrepresents Memphis in all sorts of ways I need not go into here. A few other songs made their way onto multiple papers (e.g. “Copperhead Road” by Steve Earle, “Crazy Town” by Kenny Chesney, and various Alabama songs), but none quite offensive enough to warrant any restriction.

What I did do in the spring semester was provide a list of optional songs (several of which I’d be surprised if your typical college-age student today knew terribly well) that are packed with enough blatant regionalisms to become veritable rabbit-holes of material to pry open. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting a song every Monday, Wednesday and Friday with a bit of its geographic context. I’ll include in this series of posts the song I used in class to extract and demonstrate regionalisms: “Science Fiction” by Radon (the band I spoke about at GeoSlam) sometime in the following couple weeks.

New Pedagogy Article in the Journal of Geography

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Happy December, again. I just received exciting news from my esteemed colleague Ron Kalafsky. This past spring, I TA’d for his class on the Global Economy this last spring, and we conducted something of an experiment with our students. Ron had the idea to use the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) paradigm that business-minded folks (unlike myself) employ when analyzing whether to invest in a new market. We chose a set of regional, mid-size cities and assigned them throughout the class as a mechanism for teaching geography. The set of essays we received gave us a mountain of material with which to work, but the result of the project was published today in the Journal of Geography.

Take a look.

Per usual with Taylor & Francis, a subscription or University Affiliation is required, but if you’re interested, drop me a line and I’ll make sure you get to read it. I’m glad to have co-authored a piece that hopefully points anybody teaching economic geography in a certain direction. Of course, always grateful to get to work with Dr. Kalafsky, even if he is a Penguins fan. At least his musical and action-movie preferences are all solid.

Not that any of you seemed worried, but the whole flâneur thing is coming around sometime soon, too.

“Watch Me for the Changes and Try to Keep Up…” (Summer Update)

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Here’s a quick update to what I’ve been up to so far this summer. If you have any questions about the status or background of anything I may have not explained thoroughly enough, please send me an email.

POSTCARD BOOK REVIEW

via UI Press

I am currently reading this neat book about the “golden age” of postcards (I hadn’t realized that was a thing) from Illinois by John Jakle and Keith Sculle in order to review it for the journal Material Cultures. I’ve always been fascinated with the shifting discourse on depictions of place throughout the years, especially given how integral postcards have been in these constructions of twentieth century America. I’ve posted a few items about vintage postcards on this site, but Jakle and Sculle take that analysis to the next level with the book. From what I’ve read so far, they aim to juxtapose the images of pre-Depression Chicago with that of rural Southern Illinois, arguing that the two were light years apart ideologically, yet inextricably tied together via the icons of industry. I’m pretty excited to learn more about the Chicago of that era. I might argue that few world cities are more interwoven with the “Roaring 20’s” mentality and urban blue-collar America, even to this day. I love that city, and I can’t wait to visit it next year for the AAG Meeting. Who wants to join me at the Oakwood at 3:30 AM? I really hope that place is still around. Anyway, I apologize in advance for getting sentimental about my visits there. No apologies for rooting against the Blackhawks in the Western Final, though. I still have a soft spot for the Kings after those two years in Long Beach. Now that I think about it, I’m grateful to not be at the Oakwood while I write this.

PAPER ON THE USE OF THE S.W.O.T. ANALYSIS IN PEDAGOGY

I have been fortunate to collaborate with Dr. Ronald Kalafsky to be second-author on a groundbreaking work he has been piecing together on our GEO 451 – The Global Economy course. For those unfamiliar (which I was before TA’ing this course, with no real foundation in macro-economics), the S.W.O.T. Analysis is an analytic paradigm that companies use to evaluate locations before investing resources. It stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It was an interesting experience, especially since many of our students had never participated in a SWOT Analysis before, and should hopefully be interesting for anyone involved in the overlap between economics, geography, and teaching. More updates on this as it develops, but for now the research seems to be in good hands with Ron.

CHAPTER ON THE NEW ECONOMICS OF MUSIC

Wombleton, the best British record shop from the 1960s that happens to be in Highland Park, Los Angeles (Timeout LA)

At AAG 2013 in LA, I participated in a panel that Brian Hracs (Upsalla University) organized about the “New economics of the music industry.” Well he recently announced that he will be turning several of the papers presented into a published book about new approaches to studying the confluence of place, music, and money. My chapter is currently titled “Emotional Landscapes and the Evolution of Vinyl Record Retail: A Case Study of Highland Park, Los Angeles.” I still have a lot of revision to do, but my argument is, as my Master’s Thesis argued, that relying on consumers’ emotional attachment to places (both concrete and imagined) is a key component in operating a physical music retailer today. While artists do their part in luring listeners in with iconic cover art that evokes place, the retailers are doing the same, and three businesses I got to know in Highland Park (one of my favorite places in all of Los Angeles) were perfect examples. Stay tuned for more details about this one.

“HEY CHUCK! IT’S YOUR COUSIN, MARVIN BERRY! YOU KNOW THAT NEW SOUND YOU’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR? WELL LISTEN TO THIS!”

“Watch me for the changes and try to keep up…”

I don’t think I can leverage that as a title for the chapter, but I’m going to begin a chapter on the soundscapes of Hill Valley, CA. How exactly does the diegetic sounds (specifically, the music) in Back to the Future formulate our perceived landscape of Marty McFly’s hometown? We’ve had this project in the works for well over a year now, and we’re excited to see if slowly kicking into motion over this fall. I’m very excited to have a “Back to the Future” panel at AAG 2015 (naturally) featuring a number of the chapter authors in “Save the Clocktower! Imagined Geographies of Hill Valley 1885 – 2015.”

I’ve been getting more emails from interested writers for the project, and I’m still anxious to see what materializes over the next year. Ideally, I’ll get my own drafts done before long (including an introduction for the book with my good friend Teresa Anderson-Sharma), since I’m going to be teaching GEO 101 in the Fall here in Knoxville. A busy time, but I’d never get anything done if I didn’t stress myself out from time to time.

THE ERGS! on One Week // One Band

Philly, 2008

This one doesn’t have as much to do with Geography, but it’s nonetheless great for anybody interested in my music writing. I’m very excited to be contributing a week’s worth of entries on the kings of Jersey dork-pop for the great site One Week // One Band over the week of June 23rd. I wish I spent more time in New Jersey so I had more to write about their humble middle class middle-NJ origins… wait, no I don’t. But if there’s one positive thing New Jersey has given us by the boatload over the past few decades, it’s been great music. Perhaps no band has encapsulated the pissed off turn-of-the-century zeitgeist with as much humor as The Ergs! did. They stopped playing formally in 2008, all three members are still very musically active (Jeff in Black Wine, Joe in Night Birds, and Mike in every band that isn’t those two) and their legacy is growing.

So…. that’s what you can find me up to this summer. I’m also on board with your bike ride around the Knoxville area or spontaneous regional road trip. If I don’t see you around, I hope you have a great break, too and get out enough. See you back here soon.