January 25, 2008

Deadheads in Academe

To the Editor:

Paul Basken's "Learning From the Dead" (The Chronicle, December 14) did not establish the historical context leading up to the symposium at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, "Unbroken Chain: The Grateful Dead in Music, Culture, and Memory." The symposium built on 10 years of meetings at the annual Southwest/Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Association conference, where there is a well-established Grateful Dead track (last year's meeting had 13