The universe is letting me be great. I'm beyond excited to teach my American Popular Culture course on what I'm theorizing as the Hip Hop South. Aside from lowkey helping me stay focused on my own research, the course fills in a gap that addresses the question of how the Black South culturally functions after the Civil Rights Movement. Our primary texts are Zandria F. Robinson's This Ain't Chicago and Kiese Laymon's Long Division. 
Dr. Zandria Robinson and This Ain't Chicago
















Kiese Laymon and Long Division









While we acknowledge the significance and lingering presence of Civil Rights lore and memory in the present, we will use hip hop to decentralize the Civil Rights Movement as the be all end all of contemporary Black southern identity. This course builds itself upon the idea that history and the present are cyclical and inextricably linked. We use hip hop to recognize and construct a southern cultural expression that situates the Post-Civil Rights south as poly-temporal: multiple souths, multiple time signatures, and multiple experiences. Southern hip hop will serve as a crux to bring these elements together to address questions of race, space, and place in the late 20th and 21st century American South.




Week by Week Schedule*
*Subject to change with advanced notice

Week 1:
1/7: Course Introduction and Syllabus Review via Brightspace

Week 2:
1/12: Robinson, �Introduction�

1/14: Robinson, �Finding the Black South;� Darren Grem, �The South Got Something to Say� (BRIGHTSPACE)

Week 3:
1/19: MLK DAY HOLIDAY � NO CLASS

1/21: Matt Miller, �Dirty Decade: Rap Music and the U.S. South 1997-2007� (BRIGHTSPACE); Killer Mike and Joycelyn Wilson, �Killer Mike and the Hip Hop Imagination� (BRIGHTSPACE)

Week 4:
1/26: LECTURE: Outkast and the Hip Hop South

1/28: Frannie Kelley, �Outkast and Atlanta� (BRIGHTSPACE); Jason Parham, �Outkast Contextually� (BRIGHTSPACE); Jon Pareles, �Rappers Turn Dialectic into a Conversation� (BRIGHTSPACE)

Week 5:
2/2: Film: Idlewild

2/4: Film: Idlewild

Week 6:
2/9: Discussion: Idlewild;

2/11: Robinson, �Post Soul Blues�

Week 7:
2/16: Jesmyn Ward, �No Mercy in Motion� (BRIGHTSPACE); �Beating the Drum (Interview with Jesmyn Ward)� (BRIGHTSPACE)

2/18: Charles M. Blow, �The Curious Case of Trayvon Martin,� (BRIGHTSPACE); David J. Leonard and Lisa Guerrero, �Playing Dead: the Trayvoning Meme and the Mocking of Black Death� (BRIGHTSPACE)

Week 8:
2/23: Regina Bradley, �Fear of a Black in the Suburb� (BRIGHTSPACE); Brittney Cooper�Michael Dunn and Open Season on Black Teenagers� (BRIGHTSPACE); Ta-Nehisi Coates, �Black Boy Interrupted�

2/25: Outkasted Conversations: Kiese Laymon (BRIGHTSPACE); Laymon, �How Hip Hop Stole My Southern Black Boy� (BRIGHTSPACE); QUIZ 1

Week 9:
3/2: Long Division, �One Sentence� through �Click That�

3/4: Long Division, �Baize� through �That Work Shed�

Week 10:
3/9: Long Division, �Quarter Black� through �Eyes Have It�

3/11: Long Division, �And a Way� through end of the book

Week 11:
3/16: Robinson, �Not Stud�n� �em White Folks�

3/18: Joshua Newman, �NASCAR and the Southernization of America� (BRIGHTSPACE); Erich Nunn, �Country Music Souls of White Folks� (BRIGHTSPACE)

Week 12:
3/23: Tressie McMillan Cottom, �Reading Hick Hop� (BRIGHTSPACE); LINER NOTES DUE

3/25: Cheryl Harris and Devon Carbado �Loot or Find: Fact or Frame?� (BRIGHTSPACE); John L. Jackson �HBO�s Utopian Realism: Down in the Treme� (BRIGHTSPACE);

Week 13:
3/30: John Ortved, �Ratchet: The Rap Insult that Became a Compliment� (BRIGHTSPACE); Regina Bradley, �I Been On (Ratchet)� (BRIGHTSPACE); Brittney Cooper, �(Un)clutching My Mother�s Pearls� (BRIGHTSPACE);

4/1: Heidi Lewis, �Exhuming the Ratchet Before It�s Buried� (BRIGHTSPACE); VIDEO: �Beyonce Black Feminism Backlash� (BRIGHTSPACE); QUIZ 2

Week 14: SPRING BREAK � NO CLASS

Week 15:
4/13: CRITICAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY WORKSHOP GROUP 1

4/15: CRITICAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY WORKSHOP GROUP 2

Week 16:
4/20: LECTURE: Visualizing the Hip Hop South

4/22: David Banner, �Walking with Gods� (BRIGHTSPACE); Robert Hodge Destroy and Rebuild (BRIGHTSPACE); John Jennings and DamianDuffy, The Hole (EXCERPT) (BRIGHTSPACE); John Jennings and Stacey Robinson, Black Kirby (BRIGHTSPACE)

Week 17:
4/29: Course Wrap-up




CRITICAL AUTOBIOGRAPHIES DUE MAY 1, 2015 BY 11:59:59PM