ENGL 4680 Hip Hop Literature & Culture

Prerequisite: Sophomore standing. This course will work to situate hip hop literature and culture as extension of larger traditions of African America literature and culture. It will demonstrate how hip hop culture can facilitate a simultaneous engagement of various supposed oppositions, such as black/white, male/female, moral/immoral, and less obviously past/present and body/spirit. In doing so, we will also begin to think about how an examination of hip hop culture and literary production can trouble the tendencies to construct boundaries between high/low and/or musical/literary culture. We will utilize a variety of texts including folklore, novels, film and, of course, sonic texts.