Hip-Hop Auto/Audiobiographies
a Discovery Core Experience
BCORE 117 (Arts & Humanities)
About This Course
The class begins by contextualizing the history, form, and social function of autobiographical writing in the United States. We explore primary and secondary texts, paying attention to the genre’s central preoccupations with individual selfhood, national belonging, memory, and time.
Once we turn toward hip hop (around midterm), two overarching concerns will guide the remainder of our time together; 1) what are some of the characteristics of earlier American autobiographies we can identify in hip-hop storytelling, and 2) how do artists like Lauryn Hill and Tupac Shakur draw on oral, musical, and literary traditions to challenge the primacy of individual subjectivity at the center of autobiographical writing?
Selected Texts & Films
Some albums we will consider in their entirety are:
- Me Against the World (Tupac Shakur),
- The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (Lauryn Hill), and
- The ArchAndroid (Janelle Monáe).
Students will be asked to purchase a course reader from the University Bookstore and complete a variety of assignments, including reading response papers, an autobiographical sketch, and an “audiobiography.”
Dr. Georgia Roberts
School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences
About Dr. Roberts
- Ph.D. English, University of Washington, Seattle
- M.A. English, University of Washington, Seattle
- B.A. English and Ethnic Studies (minor), University of California, Berkeley
Contact
Email: gmr2@uw.edu