Salem College Offers A Martina McBride Course

(CelebrityAccess MediaWire) — Martina McBride has recently found herself back in the classroom. Not as a student or even as a teacher but rather as the course subject matter. Young women at Salem College in Winston-Salem, NC, have been given a special opportunity to sign up for a class entitled "Happy Girl/Broken Wing: Martina McBride as Text. The class, being taught by English professor Dr. Ron DePeter, will study McBride's performances, both on albums and in videos, focusing primarily on her Greatest Hits and Martina albums.

"By analyzing her songs and videos, I hope to enable students to gain a deeper appreciation of how McBride uses her voice to convey a woman's experience artfully and in its entire dimension, from heartbreak to gratitude, from personal fulfillment to social and political commitment," DePeter says of the course.

Another point of interest in the class will be McBride's interpretations of songs written by others. "Even though McBride is not the author of her songs, she brings her own unique voice and world view to each performance," DePeter says of his choice of McBride as the subject for his class. "Through their study of McBride's work, students will enrich their understanding of how they can use their own voices for both self-expression and community involvement."

"Happy Girl/Broken Wing" will be a month-long class running from January 3-28. The class meets for three hours, four times a week. Course work will include "reading" Martina McBride material, completing a sequence of writing assignments and a final essay project. Though nothing has yet been confirmed, McBride may participate in the course, possibly by an online discussion board where students can post questions to which she responds.

Salem College is a private, liberal arts college for women located in Winston-Salem, NC. It is the second oldest women's college in the United States. –Jane Cohen and Bob Grossweiner