When I saw that the University of Helsinki is now offering a s ummer course called "Heavy Metal Music In Contemporary History and Society," I thought it was going to be a fairly simple history class that incorporates the genre we all love into academics. Its beendone before to differing extents, so my thought process was along those lines. According to the university's Helsinki Summer School website, I am dead wrong.
"The students will appreciate the importance of Heavy Metal music in western musical culture, its historical development and the characteristics of the subculture related to the music. This subculture is particularly strong in Finland, and Finnish HM is recognised worldwide as a key manifestation of this musical style. The students will also achieve competences in music critique, musical theory, the sociology of music, music semiotics and cultural studies. Furthermore, the course gives them a solid basis to critically understand popular music genres other than HM."
The course is taught by Finland's Paolo Ribaldini, whose role at the university is focused on the "sociological, semiotic, and philosophical aspects of heavy metal musical practices and recent development of heavy music singing." Here's a video of Ribaldini explaining what the course is and how it works, or if you're in not Finland like I'm not, then the video serves to make you really damn jealous.