At Georgetown University, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, a sociology professor, author and broadcast commentator, teaches a course about Jay Z. He examines the rap icon’s vast body of work from a sociological and historical standpoint. Dyson helps his students try to understand the poetry embedded in the superstar performer’s work. He provides an academic perspective to help his students understand Jay Z’s thoughts about being Black in a White world.
Several other faculty members at Georgetown teach classes that explore the world of hip-hop using the visual arts, literature, dance, music and theater.
At San Francisco State University, Dr. Dawn-Elissa Fischer, an associate professor of Africana studies, co-teaches a hip-hop course from a social justice perspective. She says the course, which attracts more than 100 students and often has a waiting list, is one of the oldest hip-hop courses in the country.
Sometimes the instructors bring in artists as guest speakers. Sometimes they dance or create art. Other times they study lyrics and conduct a lyrical analysis of annotated bibliographies that cover peer-reviewed research and cultural criticism.
Fischer has also recently received a Nasir Jones Fellowship at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University for fall 2016. This fellowship is part of the Hiphop Archive and Research Institute (HARI), which is founded and directed by Dr. Marcyliena Morgan.
Growth and misconceptions
A few years ago, the University of Arizona took hip-hop in academia a step further by introducing a concentration in hip-hop as part of the Africana studies minor, a move that received considerable national attention (and some derision from critics who took to social media to question its place in the academy).
