HIPHOP, YOUTH CULTURE, AND POLITICS IN SENEGAL

AFROAMER 154

The aesthetic and political evolution of hip-hop culture and its relationship to contemporary social issues.

AFRICAN 803

A study of culture and cultural production, circulation, consumption, and meaning making in Africa. Discussions foreground material and imaginative cultural forms and practices-their origins, languages, contents, forms, functions, genres, and audiences. Examines the uses to which particular meanings of culture and its forms are put, by whom, and to what purpose, and how meanings are fought over, reshaped, and reconstituted, and under what conditions those are or can be possible. Surveys the entrenched modes of both conceptual and critical apprehension of the cultural forms and practices (from Negritude to postcolonialism and postmodernism), explores their methods of reading, raises the issue of their linkages to sources in Euro-America, and assesses the extent to which the unique concerns of the biography of culture in Africa (expressed by its creators and scholars) have tried to tame and refashion what are now globally shared critical tools of cultural reading.

AFRICAN 605

Introduces foundational texts in the study of modern Africa and the social, political, and economic contexts of the continent's cultural production and productivity. Conceptual explorations of interesting issues such as the African encounter with Europe, anticolonialism, race, racialism, and subjectivity, African and European languages and epistemology, transformations in gendered structures, and the environment, and the circulation and consumption of cultural forms and practices. Examines the long histories and theories of cultural production and practices in Africa, the local/global provenance of forms and styles, and the contexts of their local, national, and global circulation and consumption. Promotes critical thinking by putting like and unlike texts together and considering rhetoric and implied meanings, all in the context of Africa's interactive history with the world in the modern era.

AFRICAN 212

Popular culture (such as popular literature, music, television, news media, movies, etc.) will be used to introduce the African continent and its cultures, people, and languages. Explore text from a different regions on the continent, with a focus on differences and similarities across the continent at the level of aesthetics and context.

AFRICAN/AFROAMER 233

Critical interrogation of the relationship between HipHop and social justice. What is "HipHop," what is "social justice," what is their relationship, how can HipHop can be an effective force for social justice, and what obstacles mitigate against this potential? Discussions will develop familiarity with important concepts in Black studies and social theory such as race and colonialism, imperialism and hegemony, structure and agency, identity and strategic essentialism. Consider the race/class/gender dimensions of weekly topics, acquire a broader familiarity with HipHop activism, and develop new conceptual tools and critical thinking skills.