The Final UniT
for "Word is Bond: AAL & Performance"

Our final unit for studying Word is Bond: African American Language and Performance will focus on black albums.  We will examine an entire album from a contemporary Black entertainer, not just a song but an album--- a deliberate collection--- that has had significant impact on Hip Hop as a culture/Black culture (the album does not necessarily have to revolve around rap since we are talking about the CULTURE, not just rap).  We have two options here: a) look at a visual album so that you are examining the narrative in its multiple modalities; 2) look at a narrative album so that you are looking at the whole story the album presents and not a collection of disconnected songs/stories that a recording company dictates. 

This seems simple enough.  BUT… choosing is daunting.  Every semester that this class is taught, students will pick a different album so we need to all make sure we do our albums JUSTICE! 

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Fall 2016 Choices

Lemonade by Beyoncé
Dark Passion Sky by Big Sean
Endless by Frank Ocean
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
​It Was Written by Nas
A Seat at the Table by Solange

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Reading Bank

• Dionne Bennett: "How Hiphop Culture Makes Feminism Work" (2013)
• Daphne A. Brooks: "'All That You Can't Leave behind": Black Female Soul Singing and the Politics of Surrogation in the Age of Catastrophe" (2008)
• La Marr Jurelle Bruce: "'The People Inside My Head, Too': Madness, Black Womanhood, and the Radical Performance of Lauryn Hill" (2012)
• Andreana  Clay: " 'Like an Old Soul Record': Black Feminism, Queer Sexuality, and the Hip-Hop Generation Author(s)" (2008)
• Aisha Durham, Brittney Cooper, and Susana Morris: "The Stage Hip-Hop Feminism Built: A New Directions Essay" (2013)​

• Shani Jamila: "Can I Get a Witness: Testimony from a Hip Hop Feminist" (2002)
• Toby S. Jenkins: "A Beautiful Mind: Black Male Intellectual Identity and Hip-Hop Culture" (2011)
• David J. Malebranche: " 'Coming Out' To Cash?: Frank Ocean and Social Progression" (2012)
• Joan Morgan: "strongblackwomen" (1999) (from When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: My Life as a Hip Hop Feminist)
• Marcyliena Morgan: "Hip-Hop Women Shredding the Veil: Race and Class in Popular Feminist Identity" (2005)
• Layli Phillips, Kerri Reddick-Morgan, and Dionne Patricia Stephens:"Oppositional Consciousness within an Oppositional Realm: The Case of Feminism and Womanism in Rap and Hip Hop, 1976-2004" (2005)
• Gwendolyn Pough: "Love Feminism but Where's My Hip Hop: Shaping a Black Feminist Identity" (2002)
• Gwendolyn Pough: "I Bring Wreck to Those Who Disrespect Me Like a Dame: Women, Rap, and the Rhetoric of Wreck" (in Check It While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip Hop Culture, and the Public Sphere from 2004)
• Gwendolyn Pough: "Hip-Hop is More Than Just Music to Me: The Potential for a Movement in the Culture" (in Check It While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip Hop Culture, and the Public Sphere from 2004)
• Mark Wilson: Post-Pomo Hip Hop Homos: Hip-Hop Art, Gay Rappers, and Social Change (2007)