After some Twitter interaction about Bob Dylan, I heard from two people that they would like to read my Master’s thesis: The Politicized American Legend of the Singing Hero: Joe Hill, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen (Master’s thesis, The George Washington University. 1989). I did request that people let me know if which of my articles and other works they would like to see next, so this is next.
I don’t have any idea where my final copy of it lives now, but it turns out I sent my mother a near final draft (“Some day in 1989”?), and I found this copy in her papers. Slowly these 144 dot-matrix pages will be digitized.
This will be the main page for the full text:
Note: In 28 years plus, a lot has happened to extend the narratives of singing heroes. I aspire to tell that story, but this story is frozen in the late 1980s.
Bonus: Eleven years after my mother’s death, I’m hearing her in my head as I read her notes on this copy. I still have a difficult time reading her writing.
Not a bonus: I find plenty of opportunity for pain while reading my 21-25-year old self’s cringe-worth version of academic speak. I wrote this after I worked as an editor for a publishing house, writing back cover copy, following my boss’s orders to “Pop it up!” So, it’s better than it could have been. A generation working in marketing leaves me better at popping it up now, so I only see the gap in my voice (and grammar) over time.
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