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In Class
Matt Miller, ‘Rap’s Dirty South: From Subculture to Pop Culture’, in Forman and Neal (2012). keywords: commodification; Dirty South, the; imagined community; trap.
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We’ll devote the entire class to group project work. More to come on how Forman’s chapter will fit into this.
In Class
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Jaeah Lee, ‘This Rap Song Helped Sentence a 17-Year-Old to Prison for Life’, New York Times (30 March 2022). The way this case makes Rodman’s point is downright uncanny…
Yesterday we looked at a few examples of Paul Gilroy’s close readings of hip-hop tracks–Tim Dog’s ‘Fuck Compton’, the posse cut ‘H.E.A.L./Family Got to Get Busy’, and Ed O.G. and Da Bulldogs’ ‘Be a Father to Your Child’–as examples of how to use qualitative data in your Story Maps projects. That ended up taking the entire class period. So Monday we’ll dig in to the Rodman chapter on Eminem that we didn’t manage to get to on Wednesday. We also need to see where groups are at in terms of formulating a decent research question (some of you still haven’t even created your group Slack channels…).
In Class
We’ll devote the entire class on Wednesday to group project work. More to come on how Forman’s chapter will fit into this.
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In Class
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We ended up using the whole period to review the Story Maps Proposal Outline assignment, so please review the Gilroy chapter for Monday and we’ll dive into that.
Take a close look at the lyrics that Gilroy cites as well as his reading of them: these readings will give us an opportunity to discuss the role of qualitative data in your Story Maps projects.
In Class
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In Class
Gilbert B. Rodman, ‘Race … and Other Four-Letter Words: Eminem and the Cultural Politics of Authenticity’, in Forman and Neal (2012)
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In Class
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Adam Bradley, ‘American Poets on the Hip-Hop Songs That Most Inspire Them’, New York Times (4 March 2021). To complement T’s recent feature on how the barrier between rap and poetry is becoming increasingly porous thanks to a new generation of practitioners in both art forms, we asked a number of poets mentioned in the piece about the hip-hop songs they return to again and again.
In Class
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In Class: Formulate Your Research Question Exercise
“How has extreme hypermasculinity and gender inequality entered Swissbeatbox’s Grand Beatbox Battle in Warsaw, Poland, despite not only the beatbox community’s values against oppression, but Poland’s significant level of gender equality between males and females?”
This question has been revised from the previous question “How has hypermasculinity and gender segregation entered the German and international beatbox community despite the communities fundamental values against oppression and the more feminist state of Eastern Germany.” through recent events of sexual assault and drugging that took place last month during this competition. After this event occurred, many beatboxers and community members came out with their experiences with sexual assault during not only the event but in other beatboxing events too. Our group has concluded that there is more room for research and credible sources as many beatboxers have spoken out in response to this event. Not only have hours of content on YouTube been published, but many survivors and community members have come out with their stories and spoken out about the issue on social media.
After reviewing the reading by Murray S. Davis, we believe that this research question can be deemed “interesting” as it reflects Davis’ fourth part of his “Index of the Interesting”, called “Generalization” [Davis 1971:317] Part A states “What seems to be a local phenomenon is in reality a general phenomenon” which will reflect our research because this issue is not exclusive to just the Grand Beatbox Battle in Poland but all around the beatbox community during in-person and online events.
REFERENCES
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