Juice

Among hip hop’s many icons, Tupac Shakur remains unique, in both music and cinema.

Viewing

Reading

  • Dimitriadis, “The Symbolic Mediation of Identity in Black Popular Culture: The Discursive Life, Death, and Rebirth of Tupac Shakur”
    [PDF in Georgia View “Content”]
  • Gates, “Blood Brothers: Albert and Allen Hughes in the Belly of the Hollywood Beast”
    [PDF in Georgia View “Content”]

Quiz

  • Juice

Study Guide

Note that this guide is not meant to replace careful study of the entire assigned reading. Instead, this guide highlights some of the important ideas and information in Neal’s text. To do well on our tests, quizzes, and class discussions, you will need a thorough knowledge of the entire reading.

Greg Dimitriadis’s Performing Identity / Performing Culture is a book-length ethnography that focuses on a poor Black community in the Midwest. During four years of research, Dimitriadis lived in the community and worked in a community center that served as the site for hundreds of hours of interviews. His research focuses mainly on the cultural resources that young people in the community used to navigate and understand their world. Among their most valued tools, he argues, are popular music and film. Our reading is taken from chapter five of the book, “The Symbolic Mediation of Identity in Black Popular Culture: The Discursive Life, Death, and Rebirth of Tupac Shakur.”