ENGL 163 - The Poetics of Rap and Hip Hop

Credits: 5
Deals with the elements of literature as applied to rap and hip hop. In addition to detecting use of poetic characteristics in lyrics, students analyze meaning and craft to explore the connections between rap music and poetry.

Prerequisite: Eligible for ENGL 099 or instructor’s permission.

Satisfies Requirement: Humanities/Fine Arts/English and Diversity

Course Outcomes:
Students who successfully complete this class will be able to:

Identify a variety of rap and hip hop texts. including lyrics, biography, fiction, and film, along with related literary criticism.
Investigate the historical, cultural, and political contexts within which literary works emerge and function.
Discuss the evolving definitions, functions, and struggles around “race” and ethnicity as expressed in the literature.
Discuss the intersections of race, gender, class, and sexuality as these inform the literature.
Engage in close reading and critical thinking in relation to texts and contexts.
Write to gain greater confidence in producing literary criticism.

Program Outcomes
Students will demonstrate college-level reading skills by summarizing, analyzing, interpreting, synthesizing, and evaluating college texts; and develop an awareness of the approaches writers use for different audiences, genres, and rhetorical situations.

College-wide Outcomes

Critical Thinking - Critical thinking finds expression in all disciplines and everyday life. It is characterized by an ability to reflect upon thinking patterns, including the role of emotions on thoughts, and to rigorously assess the quality of thought through its work products. Critical thinkers routinely evaluate thinking processes and alter them, as necessary, to facilitate an improvement in their thinking and potentially foster certain dispositions or intellectual traits over time.