College campuses have become rich sites of hip-hop culture and knowledge production. Despite the attention that campus personnel and researchers have paid to student life, the field of higher education has often misunderstood the ways that hip-hop culture exists in college students’ lives. Based upon in-depth interviews, observations of underground hip-hop spaces, and the author’s own active roles in hop-hop communities, this book provides a rich portrait of how college students who create hip-hop—both male and female, and of multiple ethnicities—embody its principles and aesthetics on campuses across the United States. The book looks beyond rap music, school curricula, and urban adolescents to make the empirical argument that hip-hop has a deep cultural logic, habits of mind, and worldview components that students apply to teaching, learning, and living on campus.
Hip-Hop Culture in College Students’ Lives provides critical insights for researchers and campus personnel working with college students, while pushing cultural observers to rethink the basic ways that people live hip-hop.
Table of Contents:
- Introduction: Hip-Hop, College Students, and Campus Life
- Entering the Cipher: Methods, Approaches, and Sketches of the Settings
- Welcome to the Underground: Hip-Hop Places and Spaces Around Campus
- "Hip-Hop is Like Breathing:" Aesthetics, Applications, and Conflicts on Campus
- "I Look at Hip-Hop as a Philosophy:" Edutainment, Sampling, and Classroom Practices
- Knowing What’s up and Learning What You’re not Supposed to: The Parameters of Critical Consciousness in Black, White, and Brown
- Lessons from the Underground: A Model for Understanding Hip-Hop in Students’ Lives
About the Author :
Emery Petchauer is Assistant Professor of Education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the nation's first historically Black university. A former high school teacher, his research focuses on the cultural dimensions of teaching and learning in urban schools and universities as well as teacher development and licensure. He is a regular contributor to The Academy Speaks blog for Diverse Issues in Higher Education and a former Visiting Scholar in Residence at New York University. In addition to these academic pursuits, Dr. Petchauer has over a decade of experience organizing hip-hop and urban arts spaces across the United States. He is one of the central organizers for The Gathering, the longest-running all-ages hip-hop culture night in Philadelphia.
Review :
"While the primary audience for this book appears to be the University faculty and administrators looking for a better way to engage students, the author ameliorates the proverbial "beef" between Hip-Hop and academe by offering a student-centered model for understanding Hip-Hop in college life." — Rob Jackson, Words, Beat, and Life: The Global Journal of Hip Hop Culture
"Petchauer draws upon hiphop as an authoritative source to demonstrate the variety of ways hiphop collegians apply it to their classroom practices and educational lives. This particular strength broadens the reading audience from university personnel and faculty to include readers interested in art, education, and hiphop studies." — Haidee Smith Lefebvre, International Journal of Critical Pedagogy
"In Hip-Hop Culture in College Students’ Lives: Elements, Embodiment and Higher Edutainment, Petchauer presented a detailed exploration of the diverse experiences of students he referred to as hip-hop collegians. Petchauer delivered on his promise—Hip-Hop Culture in College Students’ Lives is a well-constructed lens through which to better understand a diverse group of students on college campuses and is a valuable read for anyone in higher education looking to gain further knowledge of this growing group of students. In this way, Hip-Hop Culture in College Students’ Lives is a valuable read both for professionals seeking to work with hip-hop collegians as well as anyone striving to interact with students around their passions to create more robust and engaging college environments." — Christopher Toutain, Willamette University, Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice
"Petchauer’s book offers important insights into how hip-hop collegians experience life on and off campus, and how it influences education. His carefully constructed interviews and deep personal knowledge of hip-hop culture enable him to write a thought-provoking must-read for campus personnel directly involved with shaping how higher education influences student life and learning." — Margaret A. Swanson, Education Review
"Hip-Hop Culture in College Students’ Lives encourages new critical thought and analysis among educators, campus personnel and researchers regarding the value of hip-hop culture in enhancing college students’ learning and development. Unveiled through an artistic approach to inquiry, a portrait is presented of how students who create hip-hop integrate its ideology, aesthetics and practices into their college lives." — Journal of College Student Development
"Petchauer’s work not only validates the spaces created by students on all of our campuses, but should in fact challenge faculty, staff, and administrators to find new and creative ways to engage students. This is a fascinating study which should hopefully provide a more sophisticated understanding of how students make meaning on campus." — From the foreword by Walter M. Kimbrough, Ph.D., President of Philander Smith College
"This book is a passionate, timely, and deep-rooted analysis of hip-hop culture’s value to higher education. Petchauer’s prescriptions for integrating hip-hop into pedagogical practice are practical, culturally astute, and ultimately revolutionary." — Joseph Schloss, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Black and Latino Studies, Baruch College
"This book is an important intervention in contemporary debates on hip-hop and education. Petchauer shows us how campuses have been radically transformed through hip-hop in ways often invisible to educators and administrators alike, and he has begun a new and fruitful discussion for the field of hip-hop studies as well as education more broadly. This is a vital and necessary book." — Greg Dimitriadis, Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy, University at Buffalo, SUNY
