Georgetown to offer an entire course on Jay-Z

Posted at October 14, 2011 by Julie J Comments Off

I always think to myself that I went to the wrong college, and a fair amount of my college friends–at least the ones who didn’t transfer out–share that sentiment. Sure, I learned to write well, but on the whole, my experience at UP was a little lackluster. Excluded, of course, is that semester I spent far, far away from Portland in Rome, Italy.

First it was Bun B teaching a course about hiphop and religion at Rice University in Texas, and now Michael Eric Dyson is teaching a Sociology of Hip Hop: Jay-Z course Georgetown. Or, in other words, a whole course about Jay-Z.

Before I read that it was “Society of Hip Hop,” I was curious as to what discipline it would fall in. With his lyrics, I immediately thought that it would make for an interesting English course, as we spent a lot of our time analyzing literature. Or, of course, it could fall into some type of music course.

In the grander scheme of things, I thought about how Jay-Z has expanded his empire into other outlets, so perhaps it could even be a business class, as I specifically remember reading how he started Rocawear, his own clothing brand, after people wouldn’t give him free clothes or something (don’t quote me on that last bit, please).

As such, with all these Hov influences, I would imagine that Dyson is exploring, among other things, Jay-Z’s whole societal and cultural impact, and it makes sense that it’s a sociology course.

Anyway, yeah, I wish I could take this class! The reading list includes Jay’s Decoded, Adam Bradley’s Book of Rhymes, and Zack O’Malley Greenburg’s Empire State of Mind. The only one I’ve read of those three is Decoded, a biography of sorts oversaw by Hov, and penned by dream hampton. The contrast between that, and Empire State of Mind, an unauthorized biography, will be super interesting.

UP needs to step their courses up, or I need to go back school. Who am I kidding, though. Both are equally unlikely to happen.

Spotted at TSS