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Here, I analyze how working as a part-time rock drummer and full-time professor can generate "resonant literacy" through three intra-acting pursuits: 1) emergent intensity, 2) enworlded practice, and 3) hybrid identity. I further explain positive impacts of resonant literacy on writers, including those in first-year composition.
I started my present job in 2005 as an assistant professor of composition and rhetoric and director of the Writing Center. I was then promoted to associate professor in 2012 through the usual sorts of mechanisms: a book, articles, teaching, service, and quite a bit of writing program administrator (WPA) work. However, in 2014, in my early 40s, while I was busy making other academic and life plans, something surprising happened. An indie rock band (one operating somewhere between the genres of "emo" and "post-rock") in which I played drums and occasional trumpet from 1997 until its demise in 1999 was reunited. The exigence for this reunion in 2014 was the fifteenth anniversary of our only full-length record, which had quietly sold around 75,000 copies in the decade-and-a-half since the band parted ways. We hadn't played any gigs to support this record after it came out in 1999.
Indeed, we shut the band down completely after the record was made. Yet, some sort of virality (see Gries) evidently took hold across various internet fandoms. This record was increasingly being mentioned as a foundational record for the emo genre by the likes of Rolling Stone, Spin, New Musical Express, Pitchfork, and others, and people were increasingly interested in hearing it in a live setting.
Amid this positive press and fifteenth anniversary buzz, our record label decided to re-release a deluxe edition of this record, and the band was asked to play two "reunion" concert dates: one would be in the band's birthplace of Champaign, Illinois as a headliner at an outdoor festival, and the other would be as a headliner at a club in New York City. Much to our surprise, these initial gigs sold out almost instantly. This led, in turn, to offers for twenty additional gigs during 2014 and then to another hundred or so in the seven years since. These have taken place around the globe on a National Guard-type schedule ("one weekend a month and...