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CS92PROD
I Strike the Empire Back: Black Youth Culture in the Neoliberal Age
AFAM 217
Fall 2017 not offered

Using hip-hop as a lens to explore the development of diasporic black youth culture in the neoliberal age, this course considers the African American experience during the close of the 20th century and dawning of the 21st. Our investigation will be concerned with at least two things that we will examine in parallel throughout the semester. On one hand, we will dig deeply into the origins and evolution of hip-hop artistry--including visual art, dance, music, lyrics, and performance--and the impact of commercial forces on those forms. On the other hand, we will pay serious attention to the ascendance of neoliberal political ideology in the United States to understand the impact of those global economic and political realignments on the generation of black people who gave birth to or, later, inherited hip-hop.

Of central importance will be the Nixon administration's adoption of a policy of benign neglect toward black communities living in the nation's crumbling cities; the replacement of the War on Poverty with the War on Drugs; the enactment of free trade policies that accelerated the deindustrialization of the American economy and deepened the structural unemployment of black people in the United States; the militarization of municipal police forces; and the explosive growth of the carceral state.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA AFAM, SBS AFAM
Course Format: Lecture / DiscussionGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (AMST)

Last Updated on MAR-29-2024
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