OVERVIEW 

Designed as a lively and stimulating assessment of Bob Dylan’s work, sources, influences, and aimed at a diverse audience of scholars, students, avid fans, journalists, musicians, and other Dylanologists, Highway 61 Revisited will be a landmark international gathering. Speakers include many key writers on Dylan’s work and other scholars of music, American culture, literature, history, and international subjects as well as musicians and writers. Presentations will give particular emphasis to Dylan’s Minnesota roots, his routes to other places, cultures, and musical traditions, and his international sources and impact. Featured speakers include Greil Marcus, Michael Gray, Christopher Ricks, Alessandro Carrera, Anne Waldman, Daphne Brooks, Matt Friedberger, Gayle Wald, Dave Marsh, Thomas Crow, CP Lee, Darcey Steinke, Robert Polito, Stephen Scobie, Dylan Hicks and a line up of Minneapolis musicians, and more.

PROGRAM

Most Most symposium activities will be held in various rooms in Coffman Memorial Union and at the Weisman Art Museum, both on the East Bank campus of the University of Minnesota. Specific location information will be assigned closer to the symposium date.

Saturday, March 24, 2007 – Bus Tour to Hibbing
Bus loading Radisson University Hotel 8:00 a.m., returns by 10:00 p.m.

Sunday, March 25, 2007 Theater – First Floor

11:00 a.m. Symposium Registration and Coffee

1:00 p.m.        Welcome and opening remarks
Lyndel King, Director and Chief Curator, Weisman Art Museum
Colleen Sheehy, Director of Education, Weisman Art Museum

1:15                 Performance by “Spider” John Koerner and Tony “Little Sun”
Glover Minneapolis music legends of folk and blues

1:30                 Down the North Country Line: Bobby Vee on Elston Gunnn
A conversation with Bobby Vee, golden singles-hitmaker and boy of the north country, with Martin Keller, music writer, author of Music Legends: Rewind on the Minnesota Music Scene

2:15                Keynote Session

Hibbing High School and “The Mystery of Democracy”
Introduction by: Colleen Sheehy, Weisman Art Museum
Greil Marcus, author of The Old, Weird America: Bob
Dylan's Basement Tapes and Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads

3:30                 Break

3:45                 Dylan and the Beats
Introduction by: Maria Damon, Department of English, University
of Minnesota Anne Waldman, poet, performer, co-founder of the
Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Naropa Institute, Boulder,
Colorado, and “spiritual wife of Allen Ginsberg”

4:45–6:00       Book Signing with Symposium Authors and Exhibit Viewing Shepherd Room Weisman Art Museum

5:30–7:00       Symposium Reception Dolly Fiterman Riverview Gallery
Weisman Art Museum
(Must be registered for entire symposium or pay additional fee to attend.)

Optional Evening Event

7–10:00           Patti Smith: American Artist Exhibit and Reception with Frank
Stefanko, Photographer, at Bockley Gallery in Minneapolis

                        Patti Smith: American Artist
A good friend of Patti Smith, Frank Stefanko took these remarkable,
private photographs of the singer as she transformed from street poet
into rock ‘n’ roller in the 1970s.

Monday, March 26, 2007

9:00 a.m.        Keynote SessionTheater – First Floor

“Oh the Streets of Rome….”: Dylan’s Reception in Italy Chair and Introduction by: Paula Rabinowitz, Department of English,
University of Minnesota.

Alessandro Carrera, Department of Modern and Classical Languages,
University of Houston, Italian translator of Dylan’s Lyrics and Chronicles: Volume One 

10:30             Concurrent Sessions

Session 1 That Little Minnesota Town: Hibbing Shepherd Room Weisman
History, Culture, and Social Worlds
Chair: Hyman Berman, Department of History, University of Minnesota

• Jewish Homes on the Range, 1890-1960, Marilyn Chiat, Independent Scholar
• Not from Nowhere: Identity and Aspiration in Bob Dylan’s Hometown , Susan Clayton, Independent Art Historian
• Robert Zimmerman’s High School, Dan Bergan, Hibbing Author
• Echo and Beatty , Toby Thompson, Department of English, Pennsylvania State University
  

Session 2 The Country I Come from is Theater – First Floor
Called the Midwest: Geography
and Dylan’s Politics
Chair: John Barner, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Minnesota

• Direction: Home , Dave Marsh, Author and Music Critic
• Apocalypse Now and Then: Dylan’s Recurring Revelations/Revolutions, T.V. Reed , American Studies, Washington State University
• In A Cabin Broken Down: Images of Rural Agricultural Poverty in James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and Bob Dylan’s “Ballad of Hollis Brown,” Trevor Blank , Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Indiana University
  
  

Session 3Time Out of Mind: Technology,Room 303 - Third Floor
Time, and Tradition
Chair: Anna Everett, Department of Film and Media Studies, University of
California-Santa Barbara

• "TV Talkin’ Song”: The Ghost of Electricity, Aldon Lynn Nielsen , Department of English, Pennsylvania State University
• Inside the Museum: From Bootleg to Bittorrent, Richard Flynn, Department of English, Georgia Southern University
• Bob Dylan, Time, and Tradition, Lee Marshall, Department of Sociology, University of Bristol, England
  
  

Session 4Younger Than That Now: Dylan’s Mississippi Room - Third Floor
Back Pages and Back Roads
Chair: Thom Swiss, Department of Culture and Learning, University of
Minnesota

• Writing an Imaginary Biography of Bobby Zimmerman, Stephen Scobie , Department of English, University of Victoria, British Columbia
• Bob Dylan’s Lives of the Poets: Theme Time Radio as Buried Autobiography, Mick Cochrane , Department of English, Canisius College
• Portrait of the Artist as America: Bob Dylan’s Geography of Masks, Christophe Lebold , University of Strasbourg, France
  
  

12:15 p.m.       Lunch (on your own)

1:30                Plenary Session

I Was Thinkin’ About Alicia Keyes:Theater – First Floor
Dylan, Black Female Singers, Love
and Theft

• What Mavis Knew: Bob Dylan, Black Female “Genius” and All the Wrong Keys, Daphne Brooks , Department of English, Princeton University
• (Re)Covering Dylan: Black Jazzwomen’s Interpretations of the Dylan Songbook (Abbey Lincoln, Nina Simone, and Cassandra Wilson), LaShonda Katrice Barnett , Department of History, Sarah Lawrence College
• Modern Times, Gayle Wald , Department of English, George Washington University
  
  

3:30                 Concurrent Sessions

Session 5 Everything is Broken: Dylan’sMississippi Room - Third Floor
Voice/Voicing Dylan
Chair: Arun Saldanha, Department of Geography, University of Minnesota

• “Somewhere Down in America”: The Art of Bob Dylan’s Ventriloquism, Michael Cherlin and Sumanth Gopinath , School of Music, University of Minnesota
• Dylan/Disabled (Tolling for the Deaf and Blind…), Alex Lubet, School of Music, Jewish Studies, and American Studies, University of Minnesota
  
  

Session 6The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach: Theater – First Floor
Literary Interpretations of Dylan
Chair: Maria Damon, Department of English, University of Minnesota

• A Nobel for Dylan? Gordon Ball, Department of English, Virginia Military Academy
• Among School Children: Dylan’s Forty Years in the Classroom, Kevin Dettmar, Department of English, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
• The Rolling Tenure Review, or Rollin’ and Plunderin,’ Theft and Theft, David Yaffe , Department of English, Syracuse University
  
  

Session 7Endless Highway: Dylan’sRoom 303 - Third Floor
Routes to Southern Music
Chair: Paul Stone, Department of History, University of Minnesota

• Another Side of Highway 61: Bob Dylan and the American South, Ted Olson , Appalachian Studies and English, East Tennesee State University
• “A Lamp is Burning In All Our Dark”: Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and the Promise of America, Court Carney , Department of History, Texas A&M University
• Blind Willie, Charley Patton, and Nettie Moore: The Problem of Race in Bob Dylan’s Late Albums, Robert Reginio , Department of English, University of Massachusetts-Amherst 
  
  

Session 8The Man in Me: Dylan’s Body Shepherd Room Weisman
in Image and Song
Chair: Marilyn Chiat, Independent Scholar, Minneapolis

• Covering Bob Dylan, Jeffrey Sirkin , Department of Creative Writing, University of Texas-El Paso
  
• Get Born: Dylan’s Body in Time and Space Colleen Sheehy, Weisman Art Museum
• Hotter than a Crotch: Bob Dylan at the Borderline of Sleaze, Devin McKinney , Author, Film and Music Critic
  
  

5:15                 Break

5:30                 Plenary Session

Planet Waves: Dylan in Global PerspectivesTheater – First Floor

• Like the Night: Reception and Reaction Dylan UK 1966, CP Lee , School of Music, Media, and Performance, University of Salford, England
• Bob Dylan’s Reception in Japan, 1960s to 1970s, Mikiko Tachi, Departments of American Studies and English, Chiba University, Japan
• Lives of Allegory: Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol, Thomas Crow, Getty Research Institute

 

8:00                 Screening at the Weisman Art Shepherd Room Weisman
Museum: Masked and Anonymous, 2003,
112 minutes, directed by Larry Charles;
written by Bob Dylan and Larry Charles

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

9:00 a.m.         Keynote SessionTheater – First Floor

Running Through the Back of My Memory
Chair and Introductions by: John Mowitt, Cultural Studies and Comparative
Literature, and Department of English, University of Minnesota

Christopher Ricks, Warren Professor of the Humanities, Boston University, Author of Dylan’s Visions of Sin

10:15               Break

10:30               Concurrent Sessions

Session 9Positively 4^th Street and Beyond: Room 324 - Third Floor
Minnesota Accents
Chair: Martin Keller, Minneapolis Music Writer

• Bob Dylan “and the Language that He Used,” David Pichaske, Department of English, Southwest Minnesota State University
• West Bank Boogie: The Scene Around Dylan, Cyn Collins, Minneapolis Author and Journalist
• The Lonesome Death of Paul Nelson, Kevin Avery, Author
  
  

Session 10Open the Door, Homer: Bob Dylan Theater – First Floor
the Epic Poet
Chair: Thom Swiss, Department of Culture and Learning, University of Minnesota

• Bob Dylan’s Memory Palace, Robert Polito , Writing Program, New School University
• “Smooth Like a Rhapsody”: Dylan and Epic, Richard Thomas, Department of Greek and Latin, Harvard University
• In Memoriam: Welcome to Bob Dylan’s Modern Times, Stephen Hazan Arnoff , Mandel Leadership Institute and the Jewish Theological Seminary
  
  

Session 11Oh the Time Will Come Up: Dylan Shepherd Room Weisman
and Politics of the 1960s
Chair: Lary May, Department of American Studies, University of Minnesota

• The Political World: Bob Dylan’s Hibbing, Dave Engel, Historian and Author of Just Like Robert Zimmerman’s Blues: Dylan in Minnesota?
• Spokesman for a World in Transition: Bob Dylan’s Influence on International Social Movements of the Cold War, Heather Stur , Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Allowed to be Free: Bob Dylan and the Civil Rights Movement, Charles Hughes , Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  
  

Session 12Tangled Up in Bob: Searching Room 325 Third Floor
for Bob Dylan, a Minnesota Story
Chair: Jill Boldenow, Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota Movie Screening with Introduction and Discussion with Mary Feidt, Director
(2006, 67 minutes)

12:15 p.m.       Lunch (on your own).

12:15 pmStudent Showcase Shepherd Room Weisman
New York Dylanologists, at the Weisman Art Museum
Chair: Colleen Sheehy, Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota

• Bob Dylan and the Electric Guitar: Liberation and Individualism, David J. Peterson, Department of Library Science, College of St. Catherine, Saint Paul
• Taking the Dark out of the Night-time. Bob Dylan, a Modern Symbolist with Post-Modern Sensibilities, Steele Campbell, Department of English, Utah Valley State College
• Bob: From the Boots to the Shades, Jordan Sandvig, Department of American Studies, University of Minnesota
  
  

1:30                 Concurrent Sessions

Session 13Desolation Row: Roundtable DiscussionRoom 325 Third Floor
on Dylan’s “Masked and Anonymous”
Chair: Barry Shank, Department of Comparitive Studies, Ohio State University

Rachel Rubin, American Studies Program, University of Massachusetts-Boston, Barry Shank, Department of Comparative Studies, Ohio State University, James Smethurst, W.E.B. DuBois Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Judith E. Smith, Program in American Studies, University of Massachusetts-Boston 

Session 14Baby, Let Me Follow You Down: Theater – First Floor
Songwriters Discuss Dylan’s Legacy
Chair: Dylan Hicks, Minneapolis Writer, Minneapolis-based Songwriters

Adam Levy, Paul Metsa, Barb Ryman, Dan Israel, and Matthew Friedberger of the Brooklyn-based Band, “The Fiery Furnaces” 

Session 15Love Sick: Dylan Listening Room 324 Third Floor
and Dylan Fans
Chair: Thom Swiss, Department of Culture and Learning, University of Minnesota

• The Influence of Bob Dylan’s Music on Fan’s Identity Development, Stephen Dine Young , Department of Psychology, Hanover College
• “And That the Ladder of Law Has No Top and No Bottom”: Hattie Carroll’s Legacy, Mary Hess , Department of English, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
• Beyond Budokan: Bob Dylan in Japan, Paul Swanson, Institute of Religion and Culture, Nanzan University, Japan
  
  

Session 16Gotta Serve Somebody: Dylan’sShepherd Room Weisman
Religious Identities
Chair: Alex Lubet, School of Music and Center for Jewish Studies, University of Minnesota

• “Einstein Disguised as Robin Hood”: The Enigmatic Jewishness of Bob Dylan, David E. Kaufman , Department of American Jewish Studies, Hebrew Union College
• Dylan as Avatar, Darcey Steinke , Novelist,
• Bargainin’ for Salvation: Bob Dylan, A Zen Master, Steven Heine, Institute for Asian Studies, Florida International University
• The Category of “Religion” in the Critical Reception of Bob Dylan’s Music, Mark Hulsether , Departments of Religious Studies and American Studies, University of Tennessee
  
  

3:30                 Keynote Session and Closing RemarksTheater – First Floor

Highway 61: Dylan’s Chosen Route Through Time and Space
Chair and Introductions by: Colleen Sheehy, Weisman Art Museum

Michael Gray, Author of The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia and Song and Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan

7:30                 Screening at the Weisman Shepherd Room Weisman
Art Museum:
Gotta Serve Somebody: The Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan,
2005, 82 minutes, introduction and discussion by Jeffrey Gaskill, Executive Producer