History, Hip Hop and American Popular Culture

History, Hip Hop and American Popular Culture presented by Dr. Matthew C. Whitaker, Associate Professor of United States History, African and American Studies, and Justice and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University, author of Race Work: The Rise of Civil Rights in the Urban West (2005) and CEO of the Whitaker Group, L.L.C., a human relations, organizational development, and diversity consulting firm.

This talk will demonstrate that Hip Hop and Rap is arguably the post Civil Rights Era’s highest form of creative, extemporaneous, ever-evolving form of communication and expression. Indeed, Rap is a form of expression that finds its roots imbedded deep within African, Caribbean, and African American culture and oral tradition. This "signifying" often took on an innocuous, playful tone, but through Hip Hop culture and Rap music, it would become a way of communicating serious objections to racial oppression, police brutality, political isolation, elitism, educational inequalities, war and more. This lecture will argue, therefore, that Hip Hop and Rap "emerged as window into, and critique of, the criminalization, socio-economic isolation, and negative perceptions of black youth, and has evolved into a multi-racial, multi-generational, global critique of rigid structures, class-ism, and representative authority."

This program was made possible by the Arizona Humanities Council.

Additional information:
For those attending the program a two hour free parking validation is available for the garage directly below the library. All are invited to bring their lunches for these free programs.

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1 Comment

Comment by Amanda Shauger on April 27, 2009 at 5:45pm

Actually, this event has been changed to
09 July 2009.

I will repost.