Course Details

Course merges the academic study of Hip Hop with the applied practice of building a regional Hip Hop archive. Students will study the notion of Hip Hop from scholarly points of view, community perspectives, and from personal engagements, while at the same learning skills to contribute to the development of a regional Hip Hop archive in the UW Libraries. Participants will critically investigate Hip Hop in the Puget Sound, looking at its and origins, trajectory, and context within PNW music history. Students will learn about socially constructed issues in relation to Hip Hop such as racism/systems of White supremacy, Misogyny/Patriarchy/Sexism, and other oppressions. These discussions will be grounded in Seattle’s own history of segregation and censorship.

Questions that drive this course include: What is Puget Sound Hip Hop? Is it important and, if so, why and for whom? How does contemporary Puget Sound Hip Hop interface with Seattle’s legacy of racial segregation? How has Puget Sound Hip Hop challenged inequalities and how has it been co-opted to support inequality? What does it mean to archive Hip Hop? What power differentials are at play when building an academic archive of a community’s expressive culture? How is UW perceived among Seattle’s Hip Hop communities?