HIP HOP AND URBAN AMERICA

Credit Hours: 3 · Undergraduate Upper-Level

Our goal in this course is to interrogate some of the most pressing social problems that urban Americans face, paying attention to racial minorities who live in the most impoverished sections. This course challenges us to examine sociological concepts in an interdisciplinary lens, with attention to the ways in which aesthetics can both reflect social scientific findings and provide new insights into the social issues examined. We do so by comparing representations of urban life in hip-hop music and in social science research. We will cover four areas: economic inequality; housing and residential segregation; violence, crime, and punishment; and inequalities in intimate life.