FUSE TV - You Can Now Study Iron Maiden for College Credit

Metalheads attending West Texas A&M University this semester now have more to do than skip class and quote Heavy Metal Parking Lot. As the Amarillo Globe-News notes, Martin Jacobsen, a literature professor at the college and, presumably, your parents' cool friend, initiated a new English class entitled Introduction to Literature: Heavy Metal as a Literary Genre.

Jacobsen diagrammed out Iron Maiden’s “Out of the Silent Planet” to teach his students "phrase and sentence structure" and/or because he's metal as f-ck. The class, unsurprisingly, responded better to "Withered hands/Withered bodies/Begging for salvation/Deserted by the hand of gods/Of their own creation" than Jacobsen's past standard curriculum of Homer and Melville. The greatest college class in the world was born.

"I threw it out there just as an offhand comment one day—‘What we ought to do is have a class in heavy metal’," said Jacobsen, covered in a black cloak while kneeling in front of a pentagram, conjuring up the succubi that lie betwixt earth and the spirits. "It’s about thinking about the way humans express their interaction with the world they live in, and metal does that."

And in case you're curious what the most metal professor in the country looks like, you're welcome.