Syracuse University SURFACE Dissertations - ALL SURFACE August 2017 SCHOOLED: Hiphop Composition at the Predominantly White University Tessa Rose Brown Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/etd Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Brown, Tessa Rose, "SCHOOLED: Hiphop Composition at the Predominantly White University" (2017). Dissertations - ALL. 764. https://surface.syr.edu/etd/764 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the SURFACE at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations - ALL by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. ABSTRACT This dissertation asks what hiphop is doing in predominantly white higher-educational contexts, specifically in composition classrooms. Using ethnographic, autoethnographic, and historical methods, it finds that hiphop’s work in composition classrooms at PWIs is contradictory. This mixed-methods investigation suggests that the contradictory relation of white fans, students, and institutions to hiphop is shaped on the one hand by white listeners’ increasing identification with the historical struggles of African Americans under capitalism, and on the other hand, by disidentification or abjectification of African Americans in an effort to “win” the zero-sum game of capitalism. This contradiction results in a paradoxical situation where white fans—and white institutions—love hiphop and yet harbor antiblack views about the Black communities and Black students who make hiphop possible. However, the findings also suggest that identifying this tension offers writing instructors an opportunity to be more explicit about working towards anti-racist goals in the hiphop composition classroom. The dissertation’s historical study, ethnographic and autoethnographic studies, and review of contemporary hiphop and composition scholarship suggest that teaching and practicing reflexivity are core solutions to the paradoxical rhetorical action of hiphop in predominantly white spaces.