{"id":9762,"date":"2020-06-08T16:38:38","date_gmt":"2020-06-08T20:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/?p=9762"},"modified":"2023-09-28T16:22:05","modified_gmt":"2023-09-28T20:22:05","slug":"boss-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/boss-education\/","title":{"rendered":"A Boss Education"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Utter the name \u201cBruce\u201d at the Jersey Shore and it goes without saying that you\u2019re referring to <em>the<\/em> Bruce, the Boss\u2014Bruce Springsteen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And while that name conjures different notions to different people\u2014rock legend, champion of the underdog, everyman\u2014history professor Ken Campbell says that Springsteen is an American icon whose views and interpretation of American history in his music and lyrics have made him an integral part of our American history that deserves to be recognized and studied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI argue that his views on America need to be taken seriously not only because he\u2019s a famous person and a cultural icon but also because he has spent so much time reading, reflecting, and addressing very serious questions and issues in his music over the decades,\u201d says Campbell, who teaches Bruce Springsteen\u2019s America: Land of Hope and Dreams. \u201cMuch of what he wrote was based on really thinking deeply about the country, about its ideals, its heritage, and its vision about what the American Dream means.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Campbell\u2019s course, offered this past semester, is the first class dedicated to Springsteen\u2019s work and musical legacy to be taught at Monmouth. It\u2019s an important achievement not only because the Boss grew up close to Monmouth and regularly played shows on campus in the 1960s and 1970s, but also because the University is home to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/springsteen-archives-and-center-for-american-music\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music<\/a>, which houses the largest official collection of the rock legend\u2019s written works, photographs, periodicals, and artifacts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a great resource for a course like this considering that researchers and fans from all over the world have come to use the archives,\u201d says Campbell. \u201cThey\u2019re right here on our campus, available to our students, and it is an amazing asset that we should take advantage of.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Built around Bruce\u2019s songs and writings, the course focuses on a wide range of historical events. Here, Campbell shares five songs that he covers in the course and explains how each, representing different points in American history, reflects Bruce\u2019s own life, experiences, and political views.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<aside class=\"wp-block-magazine-aside\">\n<header class=\"wp-block-magazine-aside-header aside-header\">\n<h2 id=\"their-hometown\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Their Hometown<\/h2>\n<\/header>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-magazine-aside-body aside-body\">\n<p>Campbell says that while some students who signed up for his class were already fans of the Boss, a handful weren\u2019t previous to taking the course.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Teresa Aromando was one of those students who decided to take the course in part to learn more about Bruce because they share the same hometown of Freehold, New Jersey. As part of her final project, she made <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/dAv2mWCaKpU\">this four-minute video<\/a>. Set to Bruce songs, the video showcases Springsteen\u2019s old stomping grounds including scenes from downtown Freehold.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\n\u201cIt was fun to make and a pleasure to show my classmates the places that Bruce mentioned in his autobiography and discography,\u201d Aromando says. \u201cIt&#8217;s amazing to think that Bruce Springsteen grew up walking the same streets that I did when I was younger.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><span style=\"color:#a5191a\" class=\"has-inline-color\">&#8220;Thunder Road&#8221;<\/span><\/strong> \u2014 This song opened Bruce\u2019s most iconic album, <em>Born to Run<\/em> (1975). Springsteen alluded to the fact that this was his first post-Vietnam album, which provides the students and me an opportunity to discuss how this album relates to the period immediately following the end of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon\u2019s presidency. A period of disillusionment and skepticism had Americans yearning for a simpler time, a time that some people equated with the early days of rock-and-roll, as reflected in the popularity of the film <em>American Graffiti<\/em> and television shows set in the \u201950s like <em>Happy Days<\/em> and <em>Laverne &amp; Shir<\/em>ley. \u201cThunder Road,\u201d both musically and lyrically, harkens back to those simpler times, even as it speaks of the desire to escape from the past (\u201cWe\u2019re riding out tonight to case the promised land\u201d), without specifying exactly where \u201cthe promised land\u201d might be found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><span style=\"color:#a5191a\" class=\"has-inline-color\">\u201cBorn in the U.S.A.\u201d<\/span><\/strong> \u2014 The title song for Bruce\u2019s smashingly successful 1984 album, \u201cBorn in the U.S.A.\u201d allows the class to take a closer look at what it meant to live in post-Vietnam America. Ronald Reagan seemed to promise both a reborn country and a return to traditional values, looking to the future and the undefined distant past for solutions to the country\u2019s woes, while seeming to skip over the more depressing aspects of recent American history, including the Vietnam War. This song is a reminder that the fallout from that war remained present in the mid-1980s, especially for veterans, but also for millions who, like Springsteen, did not fight in the war but knew people who did and had their own trials, perhaps related to a form of survivor\u2019s guilt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><span style=\"color:#a5191a\" class=\"has-inline-color\">\u201cThe Ghost of Tom Joad\u201d<\/span><\/strong> \u2014 This title track of Springsteen\u2019s 1995 album refers to the main character in John Steinbeck\u2019s novel (and John Ford\u2019s film), <em>The Grapes of Wrath<\/em>, about whom Woody Guthrie had previously written a song called \u201cTom Joad.\u201d The title of the song recalls the Depression and the period in which Steinbeck and Ford set the novel\/film, but immediately Springsteen brings listeners into the present with references to \u201chighway patrol choppers\u201d and the \u201cnew world order,\u201d a phrase coined by President George H.W. Bush in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The last verse of the song is a reprise of the closing speech of Henry Fonda in the film, in which Tom Joad promises that his spirit will live on. This song implies that his ghost has done just that in the down-and-out people still struggling to make it in Bruce Springsteen\u2019s America. (The Boss tells many of those people\u2019s stories in other songs on the album.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><span style=\"color:#a5191a\" class=\"has-inline-color\">\u201cEmpty Sky\u201d<\/span><\/strong> \u2014 The last song written for Bruce\u2019s 2002 album, <em>The Rising<\/em>, the song raises a question I always encourage my students to confront in all my courses: What is the relationship between the personal and the historical? If Springsteen\u2019s work tells us anything about his vision of history, it is that history consists of the stories of everyday people who are struggling to live; work; and find happiness, meaning, and love in the midst of circumstances frequently beyond their control. \u201cEmpty Sky\u201d addresses the question of the relationship between the personal and the historical as it relates to the 9\/11 terrorist attacks. It provides a framework for his listeners to experience a catharsis in confronting the catastrophe while somehow finding the courage to go on. Sept. 11 changed America, and the response to it was multivariate, but this song and the album on which it appeared will always be a part of the story of that response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);color:#a5191a\" class=\"has-inline-color\"><strong>\u201cDeath to My Hometown\u201d<\/strong> <\/span>\u2014 This song seemed an especially appropriate song to discuss in the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic as it also deals with the impact on people\u2019s lives of events beyond their control. Whether writing about Vietnam, the Depression, 9\/11, or the economic collapse and recession of 2007-08, it is frequently ordinary working class people who suffer the most, not the wealthy bankers, CEOs, and lawyers who often find ways to benefit in the midst of hardship and suffering to ordinary Americans. In this song, Springsteen talks about the factories and families destroyed not by cannon balls, rifles, and bombs, nor by the invasion of foreign dictators, but by \u201crobber barons\u201d and \u201cgreedy thieves\u201d who just as surely and effectively brought death to his hometown. The song not only relates to important aspects of recent American history, but like our current health crisis, shows that history is not over and we are all living it, which is at least made easier by understanding it, which with his lyrics and music Bruce Springsteen helps us in his own way to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Photos: 9\/11: Michael Foran; Bruce Springsteen: Takahiro Kyono; We are the 99%: Corbis Historical\/Getty Images.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ken Campbell shares 5 songs that reflect Bruce Springsteen&#8217;s take on our American history. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":9771,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"image_focus":"{\"x\":50,\"y\":67}","hide_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-currents"],"thumbnail":"<img width=\"300\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/06\/Monmouth-SpringsteenV2-300x200.jpg\" class=\"lazyload wp-image-9771 wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" role=\"presentation\" style=\"object-position:50% 67%\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/06\/Monmouth-SpringsteenV2-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/06\/Monmouth-SpringsteenV2-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/06\/Monmouth-SpringsteenV2-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/06\/Monmouth-SpringsteenV2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/06\/Monmouth-SpringsteenV2-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/06\/Monmouth-SpringsteenV2-1120x747.jpg 1120w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/06\/Monmouth-SpringsteenV2-560x373.jpg 560w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/06\/Monmouth-SpringsteenV2-280x187.jpg 280w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/06\/Monmouth-SpringsteenV2-320x213.jpg 320w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/06\/Monmouth-SpringsteenV2-640x427.jpg 640w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/06\/Monmouth-SpringsteenV2-2800x1867.jpg 2800w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/06\/Monmouth-SpringsteenV2-1400x933.jpg 1400w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/06\/Monmouth-SpringsteenV2-828x552.jpg 828w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/06\/Monmouth-SpringsteenV2-360x240.jpg 360w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/06\/Monmouth-SpringsteenV2-9x6.jpg 9w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/06\/Monmouth-SpringsteenV2.jpg 3000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>","catString":"Currents","issue":"Summer 2020","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9762"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18021,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9762\/revisions\/18021"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}