The ways that events are presented by the media profoundly shapes their meanings.
Ta-Nehisi Coates has been hailed as “required reading” by Toni Morison and many others.
From the beginning, hip hop challenged the dominant frames used to define people and communities.
A “public sphere” includes all the venues through which a community discusses important issues.
Coates complicates the audiovisual culture he experienced as a young man.
In this first reading from our textbook Decoded, Jay-Z remembers Brooklyn in the 1970s.
“The Time has Come” (1990) is the first episode of Eyes on the Prize‘s second series.
A BBC documentary does a good job of grounding rap music within hip hop’s earliest forms of expression.
Hollywood films made by, for, and about African Americans thrived for a brief time in the early 1970s.
Neal’s chapter 1 focuses on the birth and evolution of soul music in the 1950s and 1960s.
One jazz player’s speech offers a great window onto the music industry in the 1960s.
Swedish journalists focused on aspects of Black Power that were ignored by U.S. media.
“A call to pride and a renewed push for unity galvanize black America.”
Neal’s chapter 2 focuses on the Black Public Sphere during an era of brutal repression.
Hong Kong cinema made a central contribution to hip hop’s early ethics and aesthetics.
Analyze images from your food bank web site by applying the recommendations and guidelines detailed in our textbook.
Since the 1970s, deindustrialization and job loss has posed enormous challenges for many cities.
Neal’s chapters 5-6 focus on recent innovations, and class divisions, within African American communities and their musics.
Use the textbook’s recommendations to evaluate your food bank’s use of video.
As Greg Dimitriadis argues, hip-hop artists have long understood themselves to be teachers.
Humans derive meanings from and assign meanings to particular colors in three distinct ways.
“Public Enemy is, by all measures, the greatest, most impactful political rap group to ever have existed.”
Acknowledged as one of the greatest martial arts films of all time, 36th Chamber had a huge impact on hip hop.
For centuries, designers have sought to define the laws governing colors that work together in harmony.
With this assignment we begin our second textbook, Eithne Quinn’s Nuthin’ but a “g” thang: The Culture and Commerce of Gangsta Rap.
The importance of kung fu films is signaled by the group’s first album title, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).
Run-D.M.C.’s emergence in the early 1980s set the template for much of modern hip hop.
The crack epidemic and the “War on Drugs” heavily influenced hip hop’s early content and aesthetics.
The most accomplished of 1990s “hood films,” Menace II Society is also one of the most bleak.
Gangsta rap’s narratives and protagonists drew on long traditions within African-American storytelling.
Shakur literally was a son of the Black Panthers. Did it matter then? Does it matter now?
This workshop applies concepts from the Site Structure chapter to your food bank web site.
A documentary film offers a nice frame for our discussion of music, movies, and gender.