COURSE DESCRIPTION

“We can agree, I think, that invisible things are not necessarily “not-there”; that a void may be empty but not be a vacuum. In addition, certain absences are so stressed, so ornate, so planned, they call attention to themselves; arrest us with intentionality and purpose, like neighborhoods that are defined by the population held away from them. […]What are the strategies of escape from knowledge? Of willful oblivion?” –Toni Morrison, Unspeakable Things Unspoken

 “If we are gonna put Hip-Hop in schools it shouldn’t just be taught by teachers and scholars, it should be taught by people who actually do Hip-Hop; real DJs, real graffiti artist, it will make it relevant.” –Stic Man, of Dead Prez

This course focuses on hip-hop as an (African) American and global phenomena, possibly transcending musical genre to something more pervasive. Moreover, this course reads and examines hip-hop as a frame for a critical analysis of contemporary social, cultural economic, and political contexts and milieus, exploring the black performance, literary and aesthetic maneuverings of hip-hop. The course does not necessarily offer a narrative of origins and progressions of hip-hop, but rather investigates the more nefarious narratives that seek to produce and maintain hegemonic understandings of hip-hop identities, discourses, and modes of engagement. Discussions will include themes of power, performance, culture, ritual, resistance, intersectionality/assemblage, and the body as text. Additionally, this course concerns itself with a set of guiding questions: What is hip-hop? And who gets to define its discursive or porous boundaries? Is it a musical genre, a culture, a way being, or something much more? Are certain epistemological burdens placed upon hip-hop that are not asked of other musical genres? What happens to talk of hip-hop’s misogyny, chauvinism, bravado, and crass materialism when we examine it via critical feminist and queer analytics? How might hip-hop be useful to the academy, and more specifically, the educational enterprise? Which is to ask, does hip-hop possess any discernable pedagogical potentialities or methodologies? And finally, what about hip-hop (music or culture) leads to persistent dialogues of a critical hope for hip hop’s recuperation and reclamation? To this end, course readings range from album reviews to critical essays to scholarly journal articles, as well as various hip-hop primary texts (rap lyrics, spoken word, graffiti, interviews, breakdancing, dj-ing, videos, clothes, etc.). This course will familiarize students with established and emerging hip-hop musicians, critics, and scholars, and include texts from Tricia Rose, Mark Anthony Neal, Lauryn Hill, Questlove, Nicki Minaj, Marc Lamont Hill, Cakes Da Killa, Angel Haze, Robin D.G. Kelly, Jean Grae, N.W.A., Missy Elliot, Frank Ocean, Azealia Banks, Kanye West, and many others. In-class time will include brief lectures; structured discussion activities; student presentations; and discussion of assigned reading in relation to current events and outside texts.

COURSE READINGS

Week of January 11: Introduction to the Course

• Imani Perry, Hip Hop’s Mama

 Week of January 18: Building a Critical Hip-Hop Framework (Re-imagining Criticality)

• Stallings, “Hip Hop and the Black Ratchet Imagination”
• Nyong’o, “Queer Hip Hop and its Dark Precursors”
• Sullivan, “Fat Mutha: Hip Hop’s Queer Corpulent Poetics”
• Optional: Matt Miller, “Rap’s Dirty South: From Subculture to Pop Culture,” That’s the Joint: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader

Week of January 25: Schooling Hip-Hop: Pedagogies, Praxes, and Hip Hop in the Academy

• A. Akom, Critical Hip Hop Pedagogy as a Form of Liberatory Praxis”
• Anthony Ratcliff, The Crisis of the Hip-Hop Intellectual
• “A Visit From Kendrick Lamar — Best Day Of School Ever?” (http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/06/13/413966099/a-visit-from-kendrick-lamar-best-day-of-school-ever)
• “Kendrick Lamar: ‘I Can’t Change The World Until I Change Myself First’” (http://www.npr.org/2015/12/29/461129966/kendrick-lamar-i-cant-change-the-world-until-i-change-myself-first)
• Optional: Making Some Noise: The Academy’s Hip-Hop Generation (http://diverseeducation.com/article/3654/)
• Optional: Lauren Leigh Kelly, Hip-Hop Literature: Politics, Poetics, and Power of Hip-Hop in the English Classroom

Week of February 1: Hip-Hop Feminisms: Poetics and Politics, Part 1

• Peoples, “’Under Construction:’ Identifying Foundations of Hip-Hop Feminism and Exploring Bridges between Black Second-Wave and Hip-Hop Feminism”
• Durham, Cooper, and Morris, “The Stage Hip-Hop Feminism Built: A New Directions.”
• Audre Lorde, “Poetry is Not a Luxury”

Week of February 8: Hip-Hop Feminisms: Poetics and Politics, Part 2

• Smalls, “’The Rain Comes Down’”: Jean Grae and Hip Hop Heteronormativity”
• Lane, “Black Women Queering the Mic: Missy Elliot Disturbing the Boundaries of Racialized Sexuality and Gender”
• Excerpt from Love, Hip Hop’s Li’l Sistas Speak: Negotiating Hip Hop Identities and Politics in the New South. 

 Week of February 15: Interrogating Yearning and Erotics at the Borderlands: The  Aesthetics and Ethics of (the) Trap

• Murray Forman, “’Represent’: Race, Space, and Place in Rap Music”
• Gloria Anzaldúa, excerpt from La Frontera/Borderlands
• bell hooks, “Love as the Practice of Freedom,” from Outlaw Culture
• Fetty Wap, “Trap Queen” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_kF4zLNKio)
• “Trap kings: how the hip-hop sub-genre dominated the decade” (http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/aug/13/trap-kings-how-hip-hop-sub-genre-dominated-decade)
• Optional: Jamel Santa Cruze Bell and Roberto Avant-Mier, “What’s Love Got To Do With It?: Analyzing the Discourse of Hip Hop Love Through Rap Balladry, 1987 and 2007”
• Optional: Michael P. Jeffries, “Can a Thug (get some) Love? Sex, Romance, and the Definition of a Hip Hop ‘Thug’”

 Week of February 22: Never Trust a Big Butt and a Smile?: Black Anality and Abject Intimacy & Affect(ion)

• Jennifer Nash, “Black Anality”
• Mireille Miller-Young, “Hip-Hop Honeys and Da Hustlaz: Black Sexualities in the New Hip-Hop Pornography
• Tyrone Palmer, “The Booty-Eating Renaissance” (http://gawker.com/the-booty-eating-renaissance-1633706123)
• Fly Young Red, “Throw that Boy Pussy” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4iBBfEHNaE)

Week of February 29: (Re)Constructing a Genealogy of Black Queer Hip-Hop Artists: Rhymes, Reasons, & Rhetorics

• Savannah Shange, “ A King Called Nicki: Strategic Queerness and the Black Femcee,”
• Clarke, “Lesbianism: An Act of Resistance.”
• Saeed Jones, “Rapper Cakes Da Killa Does Not Want To Be The Next ‘Queer Rap Icon’” (http://www.buzzfeed.com/saeedjones/rapper-cakes-da-killa-does-not-want-to-be-the-next-queer-rap#.riVN8RBWn)
• Hermione Hoby, “Zebra Katz: ‘Creating a strong, black, queer male is something that needed to happen’” (http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/may/25/zebra-katz-interview-ima-read)
• Zach Baron, “The Making of Azealia Banks” (http://www.spin.com/2012/08/azealia-banks-spin-issue-story/)

 Week of Marcy 7: Spring Break

• TBA

Week of March 14: No Church in the Wild: The Queer Pedagogies of Frank Ocean

• Marc Lamont Hill, Scared Straight: Hip Hop, Outing, and the Pedagogy of Queerness
• Amy Wallace, “Ocean-ography” (http://www.gq.com/entertainment/music/201212/frank-ocean-interview-gq-december-2012)
• Ann Powers, “A Close Look At Frank Ocean’s Coming Out Letter” (http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2012/07/04/156261612/a-close-look-at-frank-oceans-coming-out-letter)
• Frank Ocean, “Thank You’s” Letter (http://frankocean.tumblr.com/post/26473798723)
• Frank Ocean, “Forrest Gump: Grammy Live Performance (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHyo82Zqx6U)
• Frank Ocean, “Pink Matter” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtM8XCXSCiM)
• Optional: Marlon B. Ross, “What’s Love But A Second Hand Emotion?”: Man-on-Man Passion in the Contemporary Black Gay Romance Novel

Week of March 21: The Curious Case of Kanye West

• James Baldwin, “Uses of the Blues,” from The Cross of Redemption
• Regina N. Bradley, Kanye West’s Sonic [Hip-hop] Cosmopolitanism, from The Cultural Impact of Kanye West
• Malcolm Musoni, “Kanye West’s ‘808s & Heartbreak’ Took On A Whole New Meaning After My Mom Died” (http://uk.complex.com/music/2015/10/kanye-west-808s-and-heartbreak-death-of-a-parent)
• August Brown, “Reexamined: Kanye West’s game-changing ‘808s & Heartbreak’” (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-ca-ms-fall-arts-kanye-west-heartbreak-20150913-story.html)

Week of March 28: Laying on a Cooling Board: Vernacular Echoes of Death, Mortality, and Life-After in Hip Hop

• Sharon Holland, “Bill T. Jones, Tupac Shakur and the Queer Art of Death”
• Eric Watts, “An Exploration of ‘Spectacular Consumption: Gangsta Rap as Cultural Commodity”
• Optional: Walcott, “The Struggle for Happiness: Commodified Black Masculinities, Vernacular Cultures, and Homoerotic Desires”

Week of April 4: Guess I’ll See You Next Lifetime: Rootedness, Survival, and Afrofuturity

• Chang, “Next Elements: Hip-Hop Arts and Future Aesthetics”, from Total Chaos
• Youngquist, “The Afro Futurism of DJ Vassa,” European Romantic Review
• Walcott, “Boyfriends with Clits and Girlfriends with Dicks: Hip Hop’s Queer Future”
• Optional: C. Riley Snorton, “Referential Sights and Slights,” Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International

Week of April 11: A Constant Refrain of Reclamation and Recuperation: Troubling a Persistent Hip-Hop Discourse, Part 1

• Asante, M. K. (2009). It’s Bigger Than Hip Hop

Week of April 18: A Constant Refrain of Reclamation and Recuperation: Troubling a Persistent Hip-Hop Discourse, Part 2

• Asante, M. K. (2009). It’s Bigger Than Hip Hop

 Week of April 25: Where do we go from here?

• TBA