Hip Hop Aesthetics

Catalog description

Graduate students and undergraduate seniors with instructor’s permission: This graduate-level course examines aesthetics in hip hop culture and production from the 1970s to the present. Through studying hip hop film, music, visual art, dance, photography, and literature, we will think through what is so valuable about the aesthetic practices in the 50-year history of hip hop culture. This class is a rigorous attempt to think with critical and scholarly eyes and ears about a form many of us love. This course will concentrate on race, gender, region, generation,and sexuality as produced in hip hop culture. This course will center around performances, exhibits, and objects across NYC related to the celebration of hip hop at 50. We will also read and watch material that contextualized hip hop culture and performance in a broader Black Studies context. Possible site visits: Universal Hip Hop Museum, ongoing art exhibits; films: Wild Style (1983); “Hip Hop at 50” Instagram page; books: Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip Hop; Dark Matter in Breaking Cyphers; Graffiti Grrlz