I Strike the Empire Back: Black Youth Culture in the Neoliberal Age
AFAM 217
Fall 2016 not offered
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| Crosslisting:
AMST 216 |
Using hip-hop as a lens to explore the development of diasporic black youth culture in the neoliberal age, this course considers the African American experience during the close of the 20th century and dawning of the 21st. Our investigation will be concerned with at least two things that we will examine in parallel throughout the semester. On one hand, we will dig deeply into the origins and evolution of hip-hop artistry--including visual art, dance, music, lyrics, and performance--and the impact of commercial forces on those forms. On the other hand, we will pay serious attention to the ascendance of neoliberal political ideology in the United States to understand the impact of those global economic and political realignments on the generation of black people who gave birth to or, later, inherited hip-hop.
Of central importance will be the Nixon administration's adoption of a policy of benign neglect toward black communities living in the nation's crumbling cities; the replacement of the War on Poverty with the War on Drugs; the enactment of free trade policies that accelerated the deindustrialization of the American economy and deepened the structural unemployment of black people in the United States; the militarization of municipal police forces; and the explosive growth of the carceral state. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA AFAM, SBS AFAM |
| Course Format: Lecture / Discussion | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (AMST) |
Major Readings:
Michelle Alexander, THE NEW JIM CROW: MASS INCARCERATION IN THE AGE OF COLORBLINDNESS
Jeff Chang, CAN'T STOP, WON'T STOP: A HISTORY OF THE HIP-HOP GENERATION
David Harvey, A BRIEF HISTORY OF NEOLIBERALISM
William Eric Perkins, DROPPIN' SCIENCE: CRITICAL ESSAYS ON RAP MUSIC AND HIP HOP CULTURE
Gary Webb, DARK ALLIANCE: THE CIA, THE CONTRAS, AND THE CRACK COCAINE EXPLOSION
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Examinations and Assignments:
Weekly reading responses, two short papers, one longer final essay. |
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