| AFAM 144 | HIP HOP, RACE & POWER | VILLEGAS, M. | This course uses hip hop to examine U.S. culture, history, and its politics of race. Utilizing audio, film, popular media and written texts, the course examines hip hop's trajectory: from its origins as a quintessentially Black art form in the post-industrial, post-Civil Rights urban landscape; its coming of age as vessel for social commentary, pleasure and economic uplift; and its rise as super-commodity, global industry, and object of racial desire. With hip hop as a lens, the course then examines key themes surrounding the art form, asking: if "it's bigger than hip hop" (dead prez), then what is at stake in the tension between hip hop culture as Black social protest and hip hop as capitalist commodity? If Black poor people are "held like hostages" (Nas) metaphorically and spatially in urban landscapes, then how have the anti-black discourses of crime, poverty, and containment been aimed at hip hop by its critics? Finally, pushing beyond the boundaries of the geographic U.S., the course will examine hip hop's transnational origins and the ways in which the art form continues to be appropriated globally in the service of rebellion, social protest, racial desire, and commodity capitalism. |