AMHERST, Mass. – The Dead’s appeal won’t die.

The Grateful Dead, the backbone of San Francisco’s psychedelic scene in the late 1960s and 1970s, fueled a counterculture that transcended generations and professions.

Beyond the so-called Dead Heads (its legion of hippie followers), the band’s enduring popularity also has produced Dead Studies, a scholarly look at the group’s uncanny impact on American culture.

The University of Massachusetts will sponsor its own series of Dead Studies events in the fall, including a three-day symposium in November: “Unbroken Chain: The Grateful Dead In Music, Culture, and Memory.”

Scheduled for Nov. 16-18 at the Amherst campus, the symposium will feature 20 different scholarly panel sessions ranging from musicology to folklore and lyrics, musical performances and gallery presentations.

The event is being presented by the university’s graduate school, department of history, Fine Arts Center and University Outreach.

The symposium will feature Dead scholars, including Nicholas Meriwether, an oral historian on the faculty at the University of South Carolina and author of “All Graceful Instruments: The Contexts of the Grateful Dead Phenomenon.”

University Outreach spokesman (and diehard Dead Head) Wesley Blixt said the idea for the symposium came from John Mullin, dean of the graduate school at UMass.

“Is it possible that we’ll take a hit for focusing this kind of intellectual talent on what Jerry Garcia himself called “just a dance band’? Perhaps, but universities like ours need to be courageous in propelling serious scholarship in new directions,” Mullin said in a statement.

Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia drew countless followers, but those who knew him well said he was an unassuming cult figure.

“Jerry was bemused by it all. He would say: “I’m just as much a Dead Head as anyone,”‘ longtime Grateful Dead publicist, historian and author Dennis McNally said during a phone interview. “The Grateful Dead was not six guys. The Grateful Dead was the whole mishmash: the audience, the dancers, the guy selling hot dogs … the kid in the front row who dropped out of college to follow the tour.”

McNally, who earned a doctorate at UMass in 1979, is the author of “A Long, Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead.”

He will be a featured speaker at the symposium.

Blixt said the program for the symposium is still evolving, and no formal registration has begun. The cost to attend events is also still under consideration, he said.