How heavy metal is infiltrating higher education

Heavy metal has long been relegated to the fringes, transgressing norms through guttural screams and chaotic walls of sound. But as the Wall Street Journal reports, the genre has recently spawned its own branch of academic study at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, where scholars, musicologists, and so-called “metallectuals” regularly convene to discuss the finer points of Black Sabbath and the anthropology of face paint. The rise of heavy metal studies hasn’t come without controversy, but its proponents wouldn’t have it any other way. “This is a great day for metal studies, and maybe even for metal,” Jeremy Wallach, an associate professor at BGSU, told the Journal. “To be a metal-head in 2013 is to be part of a global community.”