com 495: sex, drugs, and rock n roll

tomorrow, spring quarter begins. i'm teaching one class, com 495: sex, drugs, and rock n roll, with thirty students.

i'm excited to teach this course for a number of reasons, including:

• i have wanted to teach a class on 1960s america for years, dating back to when i was a graduate student in american studies at the university of maryland.
  
• a class on 1960s america lets us approach all the topics that desperately need to be talked about, wrestled with, and taken seriously. topics like racial differences, gender differences, sexual differences. topics like dissent and rebellion and revolution. topics like idealism and believing in something and trying like hell to fix a broken country.
  
• having been in a social science department for five years now, it feels so good to unfurl my humanities/cultural studies wings. what a pleasure it is to assign tom wolfe's the electric kool-aid acid test! what a pleasure it is to assign a novel!
  
• i'm experimenting for the first time with a wiki. in the past, i've had my students design and build web pages, virtual exhibitions, blogs, and facebooks. but i've never worked with a wiki in the classroom and i'm psyched to see what happens.
  
• the class roster reads like a UW all-star list! out of the thirty enrolled students, i know, have worked with, and have learned from over half of them. there's something about this roster that whispers, "great things will happen."

i love teaching spring classes in seattle. during winter quarter, when it rains every single day, campus falls under what appears to be a collective depression. as we head towards spring, with luck, the sun may appear soon and we can have classes outside!