罢丑别听University observes Black History Month with a visit by聽, a hip-hop scholar who created a popular rap album to defend his Ph.D. dissertation at Clemson University.
A.D. Carson
Carson, assistant professor of hip-hop and the global South at the University of Virginia (UVA), will discuss 鈥淥wning My Masters: The Rhetorics of Rhymes and Revolutions鈥 on Monday, Feb. 5, at 5 p.m. in the Peter Graham Scholarly Commons (114 Bird Library). The event is free and open to the public.
Carson also will headline a private luncheon earlier in the day for graduate students. Titled 鈥淥wning the Dissertation,” the event is sold-out.
罢丑别听聽in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) is sponsoring Carson鈥檚 visit in conjunction with the University鈥檚聽. For more information, contact Hayley Marama Cavino G鈥09, the DK Project鈥檚 program coordinator, at 315.443.8750 or聽hcavino@syr.edu.
鈥淲e are honored to host A.D. Carson, whose examination of hip-hop as a cultural movement and an emergent field of academic study is particularly timely,鈥 says Cavino, an instructor of women鈥檚 and gender studies and of Native American and indigenous studies in A&S. 鈥淗e is part of a growing community of scholars utilizing hip-hop and other story forms to produce knowledges that historically have been marginalized. His visit supports the DK Project’s larger mission of developing literacies, producing transformative knowledge and supporting the creation of a more inclusive and just campus.鈥
An expert on race, history, literature and rhetorical performances, Carson made international headlines last year when he produced the album “Owning My Masters” for his dissertation. The 34-track project, whose title mirrors that of his talk at 黑料不打烊, uses hip-hop to explore ideas such as identity, justice, economics, citizenship and language.
“Owning My Masters” quickly became an Internet sensation. Before Carson defended his dissertation, the album’s songs racked up tens of thousands of views on YouTube, more than 50,000 streams and downloads on SoundCloud and hundreds of thousands of hits on Facebook. Today, the numbers continue to climb.
The media has since taken notice. Shorthand Social named “Owning My Masters” the year’s best political album. Moreover, major outlets such as Time and National Public Radio have helped turn Carson into something of a cultural hero. Impressive, considering he undertook the project in a small, makeshift studio in his apartment near campus, using Adobe software provided by the University.
Carson’s dissertation project, “Owning My Masters”
鈥淭he central thesis of my dissertation is: 鈥楢re certain voices treated differently?鈥欌 writes Carson on the project鈥檚 website. 鈥淚鈥檓 trying to examine how an authentically identifiable Black voice might be used or accepted as authentic or ignored, or could answer academic questions and be considered rightly academic. So I have to present a voice rather than writing about a voice.鈥
A self-described 鈥減erformance artist and educator,” Carson studied rhetorics, communication and information design in Clemson鈥檚 College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities. While there, he won the 2017 Graduate Student Government Outstanding Dissertation award and the 2016 Martin Luther King Jr. Award for Excellence in Service, the latter on the back of his writing about the history of race at Clemson. (Carson also established the 鈥淪ee the Stripes鈥 campaign, acknowledging the University鈥檚 complex racial past, while celebrating its current commitment to diversity and inclusion.) In addition to being an award-winning, published poet and essayist, he is the author of 鈥淐OLD鈥 (Mayhaven Publishing, 2011), a novel hybridizing poetry, rap lyrics and prose.
Today at UVA, Carson builds on the legacy of Kyra Gaunt, one of the forerunners of hip-hop scholarship, who taught there from 1996-2002.
In a recent interview with UVA Today, Gaunt heaped praise on Carson, a native of central Illinois. “Having him at UVA [is] such a draw for students who are musically inclined and also want to get a Ph.D. studying hip-hop. Perhaps it will send a ripple through music departments throughout the country,鈥 said Gaunt, now an assistant professor of music at the University of Albany.
