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Understanding Hip-Hop as a Counter-Public Space of Resistance for Black Male Youth in Urban Education

Prier, Darius D.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1250280239

Abstract Details

2009, Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, Educational Leadership.
My research and scholarship is part of a growing body of work in the fields of critical pedagogy, cultural studies, and critical youth research that is looking at non-traditional curricular and pedagogical approaches in education and schooling that can assist with advancing more progressive, critical thinking about how knowledge is produced through the arts, how it shapes the identity of young people, and what this means in how we go about shaping different learning experiences between schools and the communities that surround them. Using Fairclough’s cultural studies approach to critical discourse analysis, I developed a working curriculum around the life and cultural representation of Tupac Shakur as a hip-hop text. I worked with 15 urban Black male youth at a local hip-hop youth empowerment center in an afterschool program. The students critically “read” the world of Tupac through documentary, film, and his music. The students read narratives and cultural representations of Tupac’s life and hip-hop culture more broadly as texts, which helped them make sense of their own identities in relationship to their everyday lived experiences in schools and the larger society. The broader findings of my research were that the hip-hop youth empowerment center functioned as a counter-public space of resistance in which students could work through difficult life circumstances, affirm their creativity, and be self-actualized through the art-form that in large part could not be expressed in urban public schools. The political implications of this work presents new questions in critique of neoliberal reforms in urban public schools that have contracted education as a public sphere; underscores what this means for Black male youth who exist in such institutions; and explains why hip-hop culture, for many Black male youth, has in many ways (for better and worse) replaced the pedagogical void left vacant by the traditional culture of urban public schools. As institutional practices and policies in urban public school settings reveal hidden and overt displacement, I argue that hip-hop culture can play an important role in creating progressive learning experiences for Black male youth that can be negotiated between schools and the community.
Lisa Weems, PhD (Committee Chair)
Denise Baszile, PhD (Committee Co-Chair)
Dennis Carlson, PhD (Committee Member)
Michael Dantley, PhD (Committee Member)
Sherrill Sellers, PhD (Committee Member)
233 p.
Education
Urban Education; Black Male Youth; Critical Pedagogy; Popular Culture; Hip-Hop; Cultural Studies

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Prier, D. D. (2009). Understanding Hip-Hop as a Counter-Public Space of Resistance for Black Male Youth in Urban Education [Doctoral dissertation, Miami University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1250280239

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Prier, Darius. Understanding Hip-Hop as a Counter-Public Space of Resistance for Black Male Youth in Urban Education. 2009. Miami University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1250280239.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Prier, Darius. "Understanding Hip-Hop as a Counter-Public Space of Resistance for Black Male Youth in Urban Education." Doctoral dissertation, Miami University, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1250280239

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

miami1250280239
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© 2009, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Miami University and OhioLINK.