Prep
- Review Gilbert B. Rodman, ‘Race … and Other Four-Letter Words: Eminem and the Cultural Politics of Authenticity’, in Forman and Neal (2012)
-
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
- Attendance
- Screening: ‘Rapping, deconstructed: The best rhymers of all time’, Vox (19 May 2016)
- Q&A: Eminem and the Cultural Politics of Authenticity
- Story Maps: Research Questions, Slack Channels
- Reading Notes for Next Time
- Murray Forman, ‘”Represent”: Race, Space, and Place in Rap Music’, in Forman and Neal (2012)
We’ll devote the entire class on Wednesday to group project work. More to come on how Forman’s chapter will fit into this.
