FYSM 212 - Hip Hop America

Institution:

Trinity College

Subject:

Description:

This seminar will explore the cultural phenomenon known as hip hop. At once a way of life for countless urban and suburban youth and a multimillion-dollar business, hip hop is the most dominant expressive culture since the jazz age. From Puff Daddy, to the multiracial images in Vibe magazine, to the essays in The New Republic, hip hop is omnipresent in the United States. We will use rap critic Nelson George's book Hip Hop America (1999), after which this seminar is named, as the springboard for our discussions of hip hop's social, political, and economic significance in the United States. We will trace hip hop's development and explore links between rap and other Afrodiasporic vernacular expressions as we read a cross-section of books, articles, and novels by a range of authors, among them Tricia Rose, Henry Louis Gates, Houston Baker, Sanyika Shakur, Nathan McCall, and Jon Pareles. We will also view documentaries about hip hop and view films by Spike Lee and John Singleton. An integral component of the seminar will be our relationship with the young men of Hartford's Benjamin E. Mays Institute. An all-male school-within-a-school that is part of Fox Middle School, the Mays was founded five years ago to help combat the high attrition of Hartford's black and Hispanic 7th and 8th grade boys. We will visit the Mays three times during the semester and meet with some of the boys at Trinity on selected Saturday mornings throughout the semester. The final seminar project will be a videotaped documentary of our shared discussions on hip hop culture. 1.00 units, Seminar

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.Trincoll.edu

Phone Number:

(860) 297-2000

Regional Accreditation:

New England Association of Schools and Colleges

Calendar System:

Semester

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