2016-17 Academic Catalog

Hip-hop and reggae are among the world's most popular musical art forms. While contextualizing the emergence of these cultural formations, students will interrogate the dynamic relationships between them and the religio-political imagination of the Black Atlantic. The course will pay particular attention to the ways that the various cultures of hip-hop and reggae offer critique to Christianity and contemporary arrangements of power. Listening to the religio-political perspectives expressed in these cultural formations students will question whether or not the music provides a prophetic challenge to the status quo of our political and economic arrangements. Giving attention to the music, from Otis Redding to Vybz Kartel, we will contextualize it with an interest in understanding how it (if it) reflects a unique political imagination. Weekly, we will encounter material from a number of genres as we theorize the music. Assignments will include presentations, a music review, and two papers.