Monday, February 16 (OOPS, Wednesday, February 18)
Thursday, February 19
Happy President's Day, if you're reading this on Monday. Roger Williams believes if Freedom of Calendar Rearrangement, so Monday Classes will Happen on Wednesay. How many of the American Presidents can you name? Perhaps we'll have a snap quiz. Where I grew up, the streets were named after the Presidents in order of their terms of office.
But for Wednesday, Continue to read, In Class Matters,
Chapter 4. Up From the Holler: Living in Two Worlds, at Home in Neither
We tend to think of social class in terms of a number of cliches--witness the examples of films and television shows I posted on an earlier page of this syllabus. We are probably more aware of the differences in the larger cities, possibly because modern media (newspapers, radio/television) tend to focus on those areas. We are also far less aware of everyday life than we are of natural or man-made disasters. Our chapters for today, are about some quite ordinary lives in some quite ordinary places. (Ordinary if they are part of your experience, extraordinary if you have never lived or visited a "holler") Della Mae Justice tells her story in chapter 4. Click on her image above to watch a narrated slide show about her life.
Chapter 5 brings us much closer to campus--to Brown University, one of the "elite" schools (Chelsea Clinton is a graduate). Brown would seem a strange locale for a chapter on religion and social class, but I think you'll find it interesting. Again, click on the picture to the left to visit the narrarated slide show. We may also listen to it in class. I don't think that many of our era would call it a particularly "religious" one. But as the chapter suggests, while religious practices vary from region to region and class to class, there remains a religious element in American Culture.
For today's class I'm also going to ask you to read "Study examines religious affiliation and social class" which I've posted in the Resource Folder on Bridges.
The Chapter recounts some of the organizations which are part of this phenomenon of "Evangelical" Christianity growing among the younger generations. Some of these organizations have active Websites, among them:
Find a little time and take a look at a couple of these. If, after reading the section on the rise of the Pentecostal Churches in terms of social class, you might want to do a little investigating there, too.
Mt. Zion Baptist Church, Chicago. Click to Prowl the neighborhood.
With the snow days and mixups the have caused, I'm still thinking about what to do this day. I'll have a better idea afterour class on February 12. If we're pretty much on schedule, I will probably show a film. Which one, I'm still thinking about. If you enjoyed the parts you watched of the videos above, I may show you a classic documentary entitled Say Amen, Somebody about Dr. Thomas Dorsey and the gospel tradition. If not, Ihave a couple of others in mind.
Above, two collections from YouTube. One represents the White Pentecostal Music Tradition, and the other, the Black Pentecostal tradition. You'll hear resemblances to popular music in what is sometimes called the "rockabilly" tradition and the "Soul" tradition. If you want to get up and dance, feel free.
Chapter 4. Up From the Holler: Living in Two Worlds, at Home in Neither
