Hip hop

Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session

This course explores the political and aesthetic foundations of hip hop. We will trace the musical, corporeal, visual, spoken word, and literary manifestations of hip hop over its thirty-five year presence in the American cultural imaginary. We will also investigate specific black cultural practices that have given rise to its various idioms. Hip hop has invigorated the academy, inspiring scholarship rooted in black musical and literary traditions. We will also assess these sharp breaks and flamboyant versionings of hip hop style that have occurred within the academy.

Because "hip hop" is an ever-expanding area in formation, we will be concerned with the process of research circumscription. How are areas of popular culture to be explored? What research methodologies are useful in the study of popular culture? What are the discursive boundaries of something we can call "hip hop?" To pursue these questions, each student will work with groups responsible for leading the weekly discussion sessions with a presentation. The presentation should be conceived to interrogate the readings and viewings; to raise questions and issues around the material and its presentation; and to critique the relationship of the weekly theme, hip hop, and the popular culture we share at MIT and in Cambridge, MA.

Requirements for this course will comprise five components, as detailed below: weekly readings and music video listening/viewing, a free-write exercise, a performance review, two group oral presentations, and a final paper.

Required Texts:

Watkins, S. Craig. Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780807009864.

Forman, Murray, and Mark Anthony Neal, eds. That's the Joint!: the Hip-Hop Studies Reader. New York, NY: Routledge, 2004. ISBN: 9780415969192.

Other readings, listening, and music videos to be distributed.

Tickets to one live hip hop concert performance, to be determined.

Dyson, Michael Eric. Know What I Mean? Reflections on Hip Hop. New York, NY: Perseus Books Group, 2007. ISBN: 9780465017164.

Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780819562753.

Perkins, William Eric, ed. Droppin' Science: Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1995. ISBN: 9781566393621.

Baker, Houston, Jr. Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780226035215.

Eshun, Kodwo. More Brilliant Than The Sun. London, UK: Quartet Books Limited, 1999. ISBN: 9780704380257.

Fricke, Jim, and Charlie Ahearn. Yes, Yes Y'All: Oral History of Hip-Hop's First Decade. New York, NY: Da Capo Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780306812248.

Forman, Murray. The 'Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780819563972.

George, Nelson. Hip Hop America. New York, NY: Penguin, 2005. ISBN: 9780143035152.

Keyes, Cheryl. Rap Music and Street Consciousness. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780252072017.

Potter, Russell. Spectacular Vernaculars: Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism. New York, NY: SUNY Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780791426265.

Rose, Tricia, and Andrew Ross, eds. Microphone Fiends: Youth Music and Youth Culture. New York: Routledge, 1994. ISBN: 9780415909082.

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