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David Gans’ New Stanford Course Explores Grateful Dead’s Blueprint For Art, Community & Commerce

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Grateful Dead historian, journalist, and radio show host David Gans is set to teach his fourth class on the Grateful Dead during the Fall 2025 semester as part of Stanford University’s Continuing Studies Program, with classes taking place online over six Tuesday evening sessions from September 30th to November 18th at 5:30 p.m.–7:20 p.m. PT.

The course is offered on a Credit/No Credit or a No Grade Requested basis, and there are no essays or examinations. Entitled “Dead Reckoning: The Grateful Dead in History, Art and Commerce,” the course “provides unique insights on how the Dead built an enduring, improvisational blueprint for art, business and community” through Gans’ own insights and those of five guest lecturers, each of whom have authored books on the band:

  • Rosie McGee, photographer and Grateful Dead travel agent: Dancing With The Dead: A Photographic Memoir and My Grateful Dead Photos and How I Came to Take Them, 1966-1991
  • Brian Anderson, writer and producer at Vice and science desk editor at The Atlantic: Loud And Clear: The Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound and the Quest for Audio Perfection
  • David Browne, senior writer at Rolling Stone and music critic at Entertainment Weekly: Talkin’ Greenwich Village: The Heady Rise and Slow Fall of America’s Bohemian Music Capital, along with biographies of the Grateful Dead and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
  • Dennis McNally, former Grateful Dead publicist and authorized biographer; books include A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead and his latest publication, The Last Great Dream: How Bohemians Became Hippies and Created the Sixties
  • Barry Barnes, business scholar and author: published works include Everything I Know About Business I Learned from the Grateful Dead: The Ten Most Innovative Lessons from a Long, Strange Trip

Gans himself has also penned several books on the Grateful Dead, including Improvised Lives: 1972-1985, Conversations With The Dead, This Is All A Dream We Dreamed (with Blair Jackson), and Playing in the Band: An Oral and Visual History of the Grateful Dead (with Peter Simon). This is Gans’ fourth Grateful Dead-related class taught through Stanford’s Continuing Education Program.

To register for Dead Reckoning: The Grateful Dead in History, Art and Commerce, go here.

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