Is Hip-Hop Useful?
Georgetown University
Once regarded as a race-specific, class-specific expression of marginal resistance in the United States, hip_hop has since been appropriated and commodified to the extent that it has become in many aspects consistent with the conventions of mainstream Americana. In this course we will examine the history, development, and representation of hip_hop culture, discussing each of its constitutive, interdependent elements as well as their many derivatives. Class sessions will be arranged according to specific themes pertaining to such issues as community construction and constructive regionalism, black cultural production and conceptions of authenticity, celebrity and the valuation of mortality, mediated sexualities and the performance of masculinity, nationalized aesthetics and technologies of globalization, and alternative intellectualism in the academy. Assuming some prior knowledge of the subject, we will spend a good deal of time unpacking some of the most recent scholarship and popular work concerning hip_hop and its practice. As we progress in our approach to contemporary hip_hop discourse, we will situate our inquiry around hip_hop’s arguable utility as entertainment, as art, as social commentary, and–perhaps most tentatively–as a viable mode of political activism. This advanced discussion course has extensive reading and writing requirements, including the completion of a twenty-page critical essay.
