Audrey Sprenger is getting ready to leave the University of Denver the very same way she entered it, teaching the class “Names We Call America, Digging the Roots of Cool.”
This class is unlike any other offered at DU in the sense that it combines live music, film and selected readings to achieve a one of a kind academic experience.
One of the most interesting parts of this class is that it is going to be taught with the help of David Amram. Amram is an American composer, musician and writer.
He has composed over 100 orchestral and chamber works, written two operas, and wrote many scores for theater and films, including Splendor in the Grass and The Manchurian Candidate.
A mutual interest and attachment to Jack Kerouac, the American novelist who has been credited as the man who ushered in the Beat Generation of the late 1950s, brought Amram and Sprenger together.
But Sprenger’s interest in both Kerouac and Amram started at a young age.
Sprenger was 17 when she read Amram’s autobiography, “Vibrations,” which is a book about his life as a working musician and composer from the 1940s to the 1960s. She was so intrigued by him that she stole a late 1960s Life magazine article on him from the library.
“I’ve had that article pinned up on my wall ever since,” Sprenger said.
Sprenger first met Amram while following the literary path that Kerouac established.
“I met David last year through my interterm course ‘Jack Kerouac Wrote Here, Crisscrossing America Chasing Cool,’ a course which has students make maps out of the novels of Jack Kerouac and then follow them out into the world to the places where they were set and in some instances actually written,” Sprenger said.
Amram will be at DU as a Marisco Visiting Scholar, but this is not the first time he has been on the Denver campus. In 1991 and 2001, Amram was at DU as a Leo Block Visiting Distinguished Professor working with music students.
Sprenger said she has designed the class “Digging the Roots of Cool” to merge arts and academia in a way that has never been done before.
One of the unique aspects of the class is that many of the lectures happen outside of class time, which encourages all students, not just those in the class, to take part in the learning experience.
Sprenger will be leaving DU after spring quarter to take a job on the East Coast, which will allow her to finish work on a radio documentary based on selected courses she has taught, “Jack Kerouac Wrote Here” and “At Lilac Evening.” She will be able to finish this in time for the 50th anniversary of Kerouac’s most notable novel, “On The Road,” in 2007.
Students interested in finding out more about Amram and his enthusiasm for learning should look for featured lectures he will be giving throughout the spring quarter.
