The thought of textbooks generally brings feelings of anxiety and dread to a college student’s mind. Two ISU music instructors, however, have drafted a book that may have students feeling differently about required reading.

David Stuart, professor of music, and Ryan Sheeler, graduate student in interdisciplinary graduate studies, have written their own textbook to teach Music 304: “History of Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

“Depending on how things go this semester, we might change the course to be specifically about American rock ‘n’ roll,” Stuart said.

The idea for the book to focus specifically on American rock ‘n’ roll came from how many books there are already published on the history of the genre.

“There’s already a slew of books on rock ‘n’ roll, so we decided that we needed to have an interesting angle,” Sheeler said.

The textbook won’t be strictly chronological, and will focus more on regions and subgenres. Sheeler said there’s a lot of overlap in the text. The material covered in the textbook spans from the 1940s into the 1980s.

Some of the regions covered include the South, with emphasis on Memphis and Mississippi, Motown and Southern California. Among the subgenres included are surf music, rhythm and blues, rockabilly and soul.

One of the notable subjects is early Latin rock, where the book has examples such as Ritchie Valens.

Stuart also said the class can’t ignore other influences, such as the British Invasion and reggae, which originated outside of the United States.

Those topics will still be part of the class, but they will be covered in lectures, since they aren’t part of the book, he said.

The class was originally Music 104. Sheeler said approximately two years ago, after persuasion from Stuart, the class was raised to a 300-level class. More material was added to the course, in addition to making the tests more difficult and adding more projects.

“[The class] has evolved over the years,” Sheeler said. “We try to make it as interactive as possible.”

The class is currently one of the most popular classes at Iowa State, and continually draws high enrollment.

“People come up to us at the end of the course and say that it has been one of the best classes they have ever had,” Sheeler said.

The book probably won’t be published nationally. It will be published for the spring semester and also for next year’s spring semester.

Stuart said the book will be used only for this class for now. Depending on how the experience is, it might be published online.

Stuart said the last materials for the textbook, such as the bibliography, will be mailed to the publishers on Thursday.

“Hopefully, it will be ready in January when classes start,” Stuart said.