Exploring U2 for less money

Exploring U2: Is This Rock 'n' Roll?: Essays on the Music, Work, and Influence of U2
the collection of papers from the first U2 academic conference, is out in paperback now. When the hardback came out there were lots of understandable comments about the pricing, which was typical for an academic book but high for the U2 market. If you haven't bought it already, you can now get a copy for only $30 (list price), and about $16 for the eBook. Several friends and commenters here have  material in the book, and it also contains my paper "Where Leitourgia Has No Name."

New article on U2 via Baudrillard

Deane Galbraith, author of the fascinating "Fallen Angels" paper in Exploring U2, writes to say that he has a publication on U2 included in a new book out on theology and rock music, The Counter-Narratives of Radical Theology and Popular Music: Songs of Fear and Trembling (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.) It's edited by Mike Grimshaw, and the U2 chapter is "Meeting God in the Sound: The Seductive Dimension of U2's Future Hymns." In the article, Deane employs Jean Baudrillard's distinction between the production of meaning and the seductive capacity of texts, in order to "examine the role played by U2’s emphasis on the formal, mystical, and experiential aspects of their music, and how that emphasis coincides with a religious trend which since at least the 1960s can be located throughout the arts, popular music, and—in a perhaps surprising association—charismatic evangelical Christianity." The chapter focuses on No Line On The Horizon and the U2 360 tour, and includes detailed discussions of "White as Snow" and "Unknown Caller." I haven't had a chance to look it over, but I've read enough of Deane's work that I expect it to be good!

U2 class on the docket at Washington & Jefferson College

Arlan Hess, a professor at Washington & Jefferson College in Pennsylvania, writes about a freshman seminar course on U2 that she has developed for this year using Exploring U2 as a textbook. The four sections of the syllabus sound great.

Teaching U2: The Classroom as Theological Learning Space

One of the papers I had the pleasure of hearing at the U2 academic conference in 2009, but which sadly will not be in the Exploring U2 book, was Tim Neufeld and Jessica Mast's "Teaching U2: The Classroom as Theological Learning Space." I am glad to learn that a version of it, published last year in Pacific Journal, is now available online. Go forth and read!

More in the "what worship leaders can learn from..." genre

Thanks to Bob Keeley for tipping me off to this recent post on what worship leaders can learn from U2. There have been a number of such pieces linked here over the past couple tours (here's a recent 360 one, e.g.), each of which brought a little something different to the topic. In looking over past examples, I was reminded that one of the highlights in terms of both initial insights and subsequent discussion has to have been this 2006 post from Steve Taylor (whose work on "Bullet the Blue Sky" will also appear in Exploring U2, incidentally! /shameless book promotion off).

Adam

Those of you who enjoyed Stephen Catanzarite's book on Achtung Baby may want to drop over to the blog for the 33 1/3 book series and read his account of presenting the book to Bono at a recent 360 concert. Incidentally, the paper on U2's conservative voice that's mentioned briefly will appear in Exploring U2: Is This Rock 'n' Roll?

Exploring U2: Is this rock 'n' roll?

Take a look at the cover, table of contents and general information for Exploring U2: Is This Rock 'n' Roll?, the book that grew out of the 2009 U2 academic conference. I can vouch for the excellence of several of the papers that made it in, and I am very excited about seeing a hard copy this fall!

[edit: We've been asked to submit an alphabtical list of songs cited in our chapters, and I was kind of amazed to discover that I cite 29 songs in mine, to wit: "40", Bad, Beautiful Day, Bullet the Blue Sky, Elevation, The Fly, Kite, Love Is Blindness, Mothers of the Disappeared, Mysterious Ways, New Year's Day, One, Out of Control, Please, Pride, Running to Standstill, Satellite of Love, A Sort of Homecoming, Stuck in a Moment, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Trying to Throw Your Arms Around the World, Unknown Caller, Vertigo, Walk On, What's Going On, When Will I See You Again, Where the Streets Have No Name, With or Without You, Yahweh. Geez, think you cited enough songs there?]