AFR 225 - Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Hip Hop

Instructor
Dougé-Prosper

Hip Hop may be one of the largest cultural movements the world has ever experienced - a cultural movement that has influenced everything from the music to which we listen, the clothes with which we adorn ourselves and to the words we speak. However hip hop culture is more than the music, the fashion and the style that is popular today. It transcends the commercialized products sold to mainstream U.S. America and the around globe. How so? Why did hip hop emerge? What does mainstream hip hop today represent? This course addresses these questions by tracing the historical and political context of the formation of hip hop; its expansion into a discourse of resistance; to its more mainstream contemporary global commodification. By tracing the philosophies, events and actors that have contributed to hip hop, this course simultaneously takes up the race, class, gender and sexual politics the space espouses. We will look critically at hip hop today, its problems as well as its possibilities. This is not a purely musical appreciation course. However, students will have ample opportunity to engage hip hop lyric, videos and images throughout the span of the course.

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