The Hip-Hop Studies minor mirrors the interdisciplinary orientation of Hip-Hop culture itself, drawing students, faculty and staff from across the college as it explores Hip-Hop history, aesthetics, ethics, pedagogy, music, dance, fashion, poetry, visual art and language. The curriculum and pedagogy of this 21-credit minor are rooted in community engagement and student-led, practice-based learning. Students will engage with Hip-Hop culture across several academic departments, as well as connecting with the college’s co-curricular programming and Chicago’s vibrant community of Hip-Hop artists and practitioners.

Upon successful completion of the Hip-Hop Studies minor, students will be able to:

• Engage in reciprocal and meaningful relationships with Chicago’s Hip-Hop community and act as allies and agents of change via internships, independent projects, and community collaborations.
• Articulate deep and broad connections between their own creative practice and the important artists and businesspeople who have shaped and reshaped Hip-Hop as a modern African-American expressive tradition.
• Demonstrate an embodied understanding of Hip-Hop aesthetics and ethics through their work as a dancer, musician, visual artist, writer and/or entrepreneur, and successfully navigate collaborations that result in events, installations, forums and other projects that embrace the breadth of Hip-Hop practice.
• Idiomatically employ the technical languages associated with Hip-Hop practices in music, dance and visual art as a means of describing and critiquing their own work and the work of other practitioners.
• Fluently articulate and engage in dialogue that will challenge, provoke, inspire and question long-standing theories and myths about Hip-Hop as they relate to issues of appropriation, power and resistance, race, gender, class and social justice.

Program Requirements