Minor in Africana Studies with Concentration in Hip-Hop Cultures
To declare this Minor and/or for more info, contact: Dr. Bonnie Wasserman (bwasserman@email.arizona.edu) or call 520-621-0105. Dr. Wasserman's office hours: Monday and Wednesday at 3-5pm in 229 Learning Services Building.
18 units among the courses listed below:
Required (core):
AFAS/SOC 220 Introduction to African American Studies
AFAS 302 Research Approaches
AFAS/RELI 335 Rap, Culture, and God
AFAS 371 Hip-Hop Cinema
AFAS/FREN 373 US & Francophone Hip-Hop Cultures
Take 1 among the following electives:
AFAS 200 Africana Studies
AFAS 207 African American History (1440-1877)
AFAS/HIST 208 African American History (1865-present)
AFAS 318 Pan African Dance Aesthetics
AFAS 439 Blacks in Hollywood
The Africana Studies’ Minor with concentration in “Hip-Hop Cultures” provides students with a solid introduction and broad understanding of the origins and developing of the forms of expression that make up hip-hop cultures throughout the world: hip-hop dance, rap music, graffiti/tagging, fashion, business, and film. The Minor introduces students to the main themes represented in hip-hop cultures: appropriation and defense of spaces, mixing of different cultures, migrations, multilingualism, race, class, gender, religions, sexuality, nationality, politics and the economy, and, the search for identity.
Hip Hop culture has become an all-pervasive key component of contemporary American society, culture, and identity which warrants serious academic inquiry.
This minor not only embraces the students' own cultural context and lived experiences but also prepares and equips them to function and understand the 21st century cultural reality that will confront them after school. Hip-Hop has not only become such an all-pervasive, ubiquitous cultural expression but also turned out to be a phenomenal cultural force that has influenced and managed to shape local, national, regional and global issues in its 30-plus years.
Given the challenges of negotiating cultural differences in an increasingly complex and interconnected world this minor will accord students the opportunity to investigate hip-hop's pervasive, transformative and exciting cultural force which severely impacted many elements of mainstream American culture to the extent that corporations have embraced hip-hop music and artists as a means of marketing goods to everyone.
Thus our view of hip-hop cultures goes beyond the stereotypical gangster and drug cultures to incorporate this expressive medium's relationships and presences across different academic disciplines such as music, dance, language, religion, gender, culture, history, politics, marketing, fashion, management as well as film, radio, TV and performance studies.