The Review

Issue date: 10/23/07 Section: News

Media Credit: John Transue

Hip-hop, while an increasingly large part of mainstream media, is rarely considered a topic of worthy of academic exploration. The trend is changing, however. Hip-hop and other offbeat subject areas are now becoming the focus of several new university courses.

English professor Bernard Kaplan has been teaching a freshmen honors colloquium course on Hip-hop culture for the past five years.

"The course began when Professor Ann Ardis, who was then director of Honors, asked me to suggest new colloquia and I proposed this one," Kaplan said. "Since the class is limited to 22 students, it is always filled."

He said the goals of the course are to study the components, origins and current state of Hip-hop culture. The class poses questions about race, class, capitalism and other social issues. It also focuses on Hip-hop's influence on American culture.

"The class is interactive," Kaplan said. "Students write a series of papers and are asked to bring in examples of the concerns we are studying. The final project for the course is a longer paper on any aspect of Hip-hop culture. In the past, these papers have ranged from beefs in Hip-hop, to violence against women in Hip-hop, to Hip-hop in the NBA, to Hip-hop and Christianity."

He said the purpose of the class is not to reach any fixed conclusions but rather to focus on how Hip-hop can be understood in many different ways.

"Hip-hop is a rich culture," Kaplan said. "I love teaching this course."

Laura Salsini, an associate professor of Italian, taught a class in Spring '07 titled, "Immigrants, Mobsters and Mommas."

Salsini said the course was an adaptation of one she had taught earlier, which had generated a lot of interest, allowing for the new course to immediately be approved. The goals of the course were to explore some of the films, novels and short stories produced by Italian-American directors and authors. During the course of the semester, the class examines how these artists have challenged the stereotypes of Italian Americans.

"The title of the course refers to some of the popular images that many people have of Italian Americans," she said. " 'Gangsters,' of course, is obvious. Italian Americans are often associated with the Mafia, and we explore in the course how that image has been perpetuated in popular culture. We study as well the immigrant experience and how Italians were able to assimilate to American culture and society. And finally, we look at Italian-American women, especially through the novel 'Umbertina,' which offers very clear challenges to the image of Italian-American women as passive."

Continued...

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