Another Semester in the Books at UW-Madison

Phew! We made it to the end of the semester! 250ish UW-Madison undergrads have officially been edumacated on ways and meanings of musics around the world. I've been excited and really encouraged by so many of the incredible final projects (a two-hour audio production about Elvis impersonators in the Upper Midwest, anyone?!?) and we've got just one final exam left to see how much of the course sunk in.

My many thanks to Dr. Nadia Chana and the Mead Witter School of Music for letting me takeover and redesign this course, to Mills Music Library for letting me take on the additional course load, and to our wonderful graduate TAs who have been grading machines and leading engaging discussion sections all semester!

I also want to send an extra special thanks to all of our wonderful guest speakers this semester: My master's thesis advisor and legendary ethnomusicologist/archivist/musician (and UW alum!!) Dr. Portia Maultsby; hip-hop scholar, folklorist, baseball card collector, and all-around great human being, Dr. Langston Collin Wilkins (I'm so glad we both ended up at UW!); primary source for all things music and space-related, one of higher ed's finest comedians, and a mighty fine chef, too, Dr. Gabrielle Cornish (I'm excited for your WPR music interview to air this Sunday!); as well as my library friends and colleagues, UW's Distinguished Oral Historian, Troy Reeves, and Mills Music Library's Public Services Librarian, Tom Caw. I so appreciate all that y'all do and all that y'all brought to our class--thank you, Thank you, Thank You!

I owe a final thanks to my wife Rachel for sneaking into our last class and snapping this photo of me in course recap mode!

This was my first semester teaching a 200+ student lecture course and as a result, I declined requests from more than two dozen audit hopefuls. I just wanted to see how it would go first. But... if you were one of those denied, I have some good news. I'll be teaching the exact same course again this spring and this time around I will be accepting auditors. Come one, come all to the party that is Intro to World Music--just so long as we have enough seats!