University of Texas Arlington

This semester, we will analyze Jay Z’s 2017 4:44 album and place it in a broad African American literary continuum of autobiographical and semi-autobiographical works. In this course, we will use text-mining software to quantify linguistic and thematic trends between Jay Z’s albums and classic literary texts by writers such as Frederick Douglass, James Weldon Johnson, Ralph Ellison, Malcolm X, and others. We will compile quantitative and qualitative datasets on Jay Z in order to produce thematic data visualizations, literary timelines, and a list of key terms, pinpointing intellectual and cultural components of rap music.

How do history and hip-hop connect? This course explores that question through a study of hip-hop in the U.S. The course will begin with a look at the 1970s Bronx, where hip-hop originated, and will then journey across New York City and the United States, exploring how the art form evolved into both an artistic genre as well as a political and cultural movement. According to Craig Watkins, “Hip hop has, and continues to produce a remarkable array thinkers who embody complex ideological makeups exemplified through their performances as writers, artists, poets, and scholars.” Accordingly, this course traces the social and musical history of hip hop through analyses of videos, music, dance, and readings.

We will focus on hip hop as a cultural force in American society balanced by lessons that introduce fundamental musical features such as basic freestyle, DJ, and cipher techniques.  Topics addressed include the elements of Hip-Hop culture, including deejaying, emceeing, sampling, dancing, beatboxing, rapping, graffiti art, fashion, as well as issues of race, politics, gender, sexual orientation, class, commercialism, capitalism, cultural appropriation, and authenticity.

“Characteristics of Black Expression” uses Zora Neale Hurston’s 1934 essay, “Characteristics of Negro Expression,” as a framework as we analyze notable features, document linguistic trends, and make divergent connections among four artists: Beyonce, Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, and Rihanna. In this digital humanities course, we will use text-mining software to aid in our analyses as we quantify the number and types of words and characterizing specific aspects of an artist’s style. Ultimately, we will consider the possible ways in which metadata can be used to understand contemporary African American cultural expression and expand our conceptions literature. 

“Lost in the City,” documents Edward P. Jones’s consistent focus on Washington D.C. as a setting in his two short story collections. The course sheds new light on the development of short fiction in the contemporary era as we use the concept “cultural geo-tagging” to analyze Jones’s extensive reliance upon specific streets, landmarks, and neighborhoods.

In this digital humanities course, we will use text mining and visualization software to prepare a proposal for submission to Publishing Without Walls.  This multi-modal publication will highlight the racial-spatial dimensions of Washington, DC in Jones’s short fiction. We will draw on concepts from the emerging spatial humanities discipline and incorporate public census records to uncover literary patterns in Jones’s work, analyze the diverse representations of black characters, and map linguistic features in a select geographic region.

Ultimately, our analyses will present findings related to why Jones’s short stories, focusing on predominately black neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., offer unique and enriching opportunities for analyzing, or more accurately, “geocoding” an African American author’s repeated treatments of the nation’s capital. 

In “Remixing the American Dream: History of American Literature,” we will explore a range of authors and works, both canonical and less well-known, illustrating the diversity of perspectives and kinds of writing produced in what is now the United States. Students will gain experience analyzing stylistics features of literary texts and making connections between a diverse cast of American artists. We will read the works of mainstream American writers alongside those who represent more marginalized perspectives, exploring shifting ideas of cultural identity and national belonging.

“The Life and Times of S. Carter” places Jay Z’sThe Black Album (2003) in a broad African American literary continuum of autobiographical and semi-autobiographical works. In this course, we will use text-mining software to quantify linguistic and thematic trends between Jay Z’s albums and classic literary texts by writers such as Frederick Douglass, Richard Wright, Malcolm X, and Ralph Ellison. We will compile quantitative and qualitative datasets on Jay Z in order to produce thematic data visualizations, literary timelines, and a list of key terms, pinpointing intellectual and cultural components of rap music.

“The Life and Times of S. Carter” places Jay Z’sThe Black Album (2003) in a broad African American literary continuum of autobiographical and semi-autobiographical works. In this course, we will use text-mining software to quantify linguistic and thematic trends between Jay Z’s albums and classic literary texts by writers such as Frederick Douglass, Richard Wright, Malcolm X, and Ralph Ellison. We will compile quantitative and qualitative datasets on Jay Z in order to produce thematic data visualizations, literary timelines, and a list of key terms, pinpointing intellectual and cultural components of rap music.

This course examines the intellectual history surrounding creative conflicts in African American artistic history. We will track creative conflicts ranging fro W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington, Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X as well as examining contemporary battles by rap figures such Lil Kim and Nicki Minaj. In this class, we will use digital tools to uncover the underlying features of signifying and public debates by analyzing linguistic features and thematic characteristics of select figures. Specifically, we will analyze speeches, essays, and short compositions using text-mining software in order to extract information and create datasets about black literary figures.

From Slavery to Hip Hop focuses on African American literary compositions produced over more than 150 years.  We will cover works by a wide range of writers and cultural figure, including Frederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, Malcolm X, Toni Morrison, and Jay Z. Students will gain experience analyzing stylistics features of literary texts and making connections between a diverse cast of black artists. We will compile metadata on various black writers in order to produce thematic data visualizations, literary timelines, and a list of key terms, pinpointing intellectual and cultural components of African American literary art. 

“Geo-coding Black Short Stories” focuses on a range of texts by Charles Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Toni Cade Bambara, Edward P. Jones and others to examine the racial-spatial dimensions of African American short fiction. Students will use of quantitative data and text-mining software to create datasets that illuminate the significance of ‘black’ geography and corresponding thematic trends.

“The Life and Times of S. Carter” places Jay Z’s self-described “four classic albums”—Reasonable Doubt (1996), The Blueprint (2001), The Black Album (2003), and Vol. 2 (1998)— in a broad African American literary continuum of autobiographical works. In this course, we will use text-mining software to quantify linguistic and thematic trends between Jay Z’s albums and classic literary texts by writers such as Frederick Douglass, Richard Wright, Malcolm X, and Ralph Ellison. We will compile metadata on Jay Z in order to produce thematic data visualizations, literary timelines, and a list of key terms, pinpointing intellectual and cultural components of rap music.

From Slavery to Hip Hop focuses on African American literary compositions produced over more than 150 years.  We will cover works by a wide range of writers and cultural figure, including Frederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, Malcolm X, Toni Morrison, and Jay Z. Students will gain experience analyzing stylistics features of literary texts and making connections between a diverse cast of black artists. 

“Empire State of Mind” concentrates on a range of texts—novel excerpts, short stories, poems, and rap music—that present New York City as a focal point. Students will develop a sharper awareness of the importance of New York in African American artistic history and gain experience analyzing literary texts.