The [R]Evolution of Hip Hop: Celebrating and Critiquing the first 50 years of Hip-Hop Education

Rooted in the late '70s and early '80s as a form of resistance to oppressive conditions, Hip Hop has shaped and informed the values and ideas of many educators. In many ways, Hip Hop culture has recently, more than ever, managed to permeate and exert its way into the soul of education and helped cultivate a collective of students and educators alike to conceptualize Hip Hop as a tool for teaching, learning, engagement, and action. Given that Hip-Hop is celebrating its 50th birthday, and the global rise in interest and use of Hip Hop in education, this session will provide diverse perspectives on the intersections of Hip Hop culture, the academy, and activism and how it can be effectively utilized as an educational pedagogy both in form and content. 

In this session, participants will be engaged in critical dialogue through different Hip Hop related interactive and heuristic activities, including spoken word and poetry, music, photography, art, dance, and multimedia analysis to explore issues of oppression, privilege, equity, and knowledge representation in education. Join Hip Hop artists and scholars alike who will discuss and reflect on Hip Hop music and culture over the last 50 years. Together, they will highlight the ways in which Hip Hop has been both a cultural expression as well as a tool to disrupt oppression. Collectively, we will explore the evolution of Hip Hop through an interactive dialogue with a social justice lens.

Presenters: 

Jasiri  X, MC/Activist, Co-Founder and CEO of 1Hood Media, 1Hood Media, Nathan Cummings Foundation Fellow, Robert Rauschenberg Artist as Activist Fellow, USA Cummings Fellow, Pittsburgh, PA

DJ Kuttin Kandi Tan, DJ/Organizer, Author/Editor, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Asian Solidarity Collective and The Asian Advocacy, Community, & Action Center, aNoMoLies, Next Level, MidWest Academy Alumni, Rockwood Fellow, Asian Solidarity Collective, The Asian Advocacy, Community, & Action Center, San Diego, CA

Professor Davey D Cook, Professor, Journalist, DJ, Hip Hop Historian, San Francisco State University, Oakland, CA

Dawn Elissa  Fischer, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Affiliate Faculty, Educational Leadership Doctoral Program, Former Chair Africana Studies, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA