About this event
Hip Hop & The Law: An Exploration of Race, Law & Culture: a Five Session Course Wednesdays, April 22, 29 May 6, 13, 20 from 6pm to 7:30pm [[{"fid":"393838","view_mode":"default","fields":{"format":"default","alignment":"","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"Credit: Jay-Z '\"99 Problems\" Youtube (2004)."},"link_text":null,"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"default","alignment":"","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"Credit: Jay-Z '\"99 Problems\" Youtube (2004)."}},"attributes":{"title":"Credit: Jay-Z '\"99 Problems\" Youtube (2004).","height":394,"width":700,"class":"media-element file-default","data-delta":"1"}}]] “Hip Hop & the Law” (HHL) is an interdisciplinary course that examines the legal system's policies and practices from 1968 to the present, particularly in relation to race and Hip-Hop's counter narrative, to illuminate racial oppression. Drawing on Hip Hop lyrics, visuals, and texts, it critiques the law at the national, state, and local levels, with a focus on New York City. In this course, we will contextualize the socio-political, cultural, and economic factors that shape the intersections of race, class, and gender in relation to the legal system. Over five weeks, we’ll discuss sociological and historical scholarship and laws such as “Stop and Frisk” (federal and local), the Rockefeller Drug Laws (state), and Broken Windows Theory (local). Participants will explore how these laws operate across time and context while examining Hip Hop's response to them. Register online for this course: starting Wednesday, April 8! We'll meet in the 3rd Floor Mae West Room The Professor: Kashema Hutchinson is a Hip Hop theorist, educator, and cultural worker whose scholarship explores literacy as a practice of resistance and self-determination. Drawing on critical pedagogy, Black feminist thought, and cultural studies, her work positions hip hop as both a literacy framework and a mode of theorizing. Through the fifth element—knowledge of self and community—Kashema engages Hip Hop as a living archive that reveals how marginalized people read, write, and theorize their worlds. Her teaching and research bridge academic and community spaces, using Hip Hop’s linguistic, performative, and epistemological dimensions to challenge dominant narratives about who produces knowledge and how. She continues to create work that amplifies Hip Hop literacy as a form of theory, pedagogy, and social transformation.
storytimeFREE
