Professor of African and African American Studies
Founding Executive Director, Hiphop Archive and Research Institute
Harvard University

Hiphop and the Global Influence of American Cultural Politics

Thursday, April 7, 2016 at 7:00pm

Join us at 6:00PM for a celebration of Hiphop with a live DJ 
and an open b-boy/girl cypher to kick off the lecture.

Pre-event performances and exhibitions presented by: 

Marcyliena Morgan, Professor of African and African American Studies, is founding executive director of the Hiphop Archive and Research Institute at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University. She has conducted field research on the African Diaspora, as well as on identity and language in the USA, England, and the Caribbean. Her books include Discourse and Power in African American Culture (2002), The Real Hiphop: Battling for Knowledge, Power, and Respect in the Underground (2008), and Speech Communities (2014). Professor Morgan teaches classes on hiphop, the ethnography of communications, representation in the media, language and identity, race, class, and gender. She has received major grants from the Ford Foundation and The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“In The Real Hiphop, Marcyliena Morgan has written a brilliant account of the origins of hiphop and the process through which it is created and evolves, from its most elemental and raw forms into the highly processed and polished versions that have become the lingua franca of popular American culture. Morgan – the founder of the world’s only hiphop archive – raises the analysis of hiphop to an entirely new level of scholarship, explicating it as a linguistic, sociological, and political phenomenon.” 
— Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University

It is nearly impossible to travel the world without seeing the symbols and influences of hiphop music and culture. Many followers of hiphop celebrate its artistic elements of: (1) deejaying and turntabalism; (2) the linguistic style, grammar, and lyricism of rapping and MCing; (3) break dancing and other forms of Hiphop dance; and (4) graffiti art and writing. Yet fans are generally unaware of the political, cultural, and aesthetic aspects of hiphop, especially its complex ideology regarding citizenship, knowledge, truth, language, representation, innovation, and inclusion. Hiphop ideology is associated with the American Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s and 1970s and includes an innovative and sometimes provocative perspective on past and present social movements. Consequently, global hiphop mainly conveys progressive American politics of gender, racial, and social class inclusion, transforming both American and global politics in the process.  

Open to the Public 
Free of Charge

Lunch Seminar

Defending and Representing Hiphop Culture:
"Did You Mean What You Said?"

Friday, April 8, 2016 at 12:30pm

Ashe Administration Building, Room 735
Philosophy Seminar Room
For Faculty & Graduate Students

In his book “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” venture capitalist Ben Horowitz argues that there is no formula for dealing with hard things, but there are patterns and lessons that resonate – and many of them come from Hiphop Culture.  This seminar is a discussion and critique of policy, research, comments and attitudes toward speech communities that are dealing with hard things and it identifies ways in which academics can support these communities as they continue to grow.

MAPS & DIRECTIONS

Directions to UM Campus

Map to Storer Auditorium