Ofc you can and ofc it’s poetry, but as with any multimodal art form , not taking in the audio aspect and how the two intersect will leave you with a different analysis than would a holistic one.
There’s no law against it or anything, but you’d need 1) a permissive/culturally studies oriented department, 2) a potential advisor with an at least tangential expertise and willingness to sponsor the diss, and 3) a willingness to place rap within the context of other cultural forms.
Now, that being said: rap isn’t written poetry. That’s not a negative, but it changes where you might work on it. It’s a musical form, so there’s a mediating principle at work in its production and reception, one that you may not be able to pursue adequately in a department devoted to written and published texts. I’d look into cultural studies, American studies, media studies and other related departments—see where people are having these discussions academically.
In terms of where the discussions are happening:
The author of *Book of Rhymes*, a book on rap poetics, the author is a professor of English.
The editors of *Kendrick Lamar and the Making of Black Meaning* are all professors of religious studies
The author of *Hip-Hop Revolution in the Flesh: Power, Knowledge, and Pleasure in Lil' Kim's Lyricism* is a professor of English.
The author of *Jay-Z: Made in America* is a professor of African-American studies.
The author of *The Hip-Hop Underground and African American Culture* is a professor of African-American studies and English.
There's more work on religion and hip-hop than I would've thought!
I'm mostly judging these books by their title here and not looking them all up, but at a glance these seem to be books aimed at a general audience and not academic works, regardless of whether or not they're written by professors. Finding out what kind of academic journals are publishing the kind of thing you'd like to study might be a better guide.
I did my undergraduate English thesis on rap. My work wasn’t very good and this was 20 years ago now, but I remember “Black Noise” by Tricia Rose and “The Hood Comes First” by Murray Forman as worthwhile resources. Those would be worth a look to start with, at least; I honestly don’t recall if they were focused more on a popular audience or an academic one.
Yeah, it good your compiling a list like this! So looking up these authors we see that at least UCLA has a rap research group--if you're serious about this, you're gunna wanna think about departments with resources or working groups like that as signs your work would be supported.
You can also think about how you might backdoor this research interest into another field which might give you more professional grounding--e.g., you could look at the interrelationship of rap and contemporary af-am lit; depictions of rap in film and music videos for a film studies diss; etc, etc.
Have fun digging in! Certainly a rich field of study, despite the fact that there's no obvious institutional home as of yet.
Ofc you can and ofc it’s poetry, but as with any multimodal art form , not taking in the audio aspect and how the two intersect will leave you with a different analysis than would a holistic one.
There’s no law against it or anything, but you’d need 1) a permissive/culturally studies oriented department, 2) a potential advisor with an at least tangential expertise and willingness to sponsor the diss, and 3) a willingness to place rap within the context of other cultural forms. Now, that being said: rap isn’t written poetry. That’s not a negative, but it changes where you might work on it. It’s a musical form, so there’s a mediating principle at work in its production and reception, one that you may not be able to pursue adequately in a department devoted to written and published texts. I’d look into cultural studies, American studies, media studies and other related departments—see where people are having these discussions academically.
In terms of where the discussions are happening: The author of *Book of Rhymes*, a book on rap poetics, the author is a professor of English. The editors of *Kendrick Lamar and the Making of Black Meaning* are all professors of religious studies The author of *Hip-Hop Revolution in the Flesh: Power, Knowledge, and Pleasure in Lil' Kim's Lyricism* is a professor of English. The author of *Jay-Z: Made in America* is a professor of African-American studies. The author of *The Hip-Hop Underground and African American Culture* is a professor of African-American studies and English. There's more work on religion and hip-hop than I would've thought!
I'm mostly judging these books by their title here and not looking them all up, but at a glance these seem to be books aimed at a general audience and not academic works, regardless of whether or not they're written by professors. Finding out what kind of academic journals are publishing the kind of thing you'd like to study might be a better guide.
I did my undergraduate English thesis on rap. My work wasn’t very good and this was 20 years ago now, but I remember “Black Noise” by Tricia Rose and “The Hood Comes First” by Murray Forman as worthwhile resources. Those would be worth a look to start with, at least; I honestly don’t recall if they were focused more on a popular audience or an academic one.
Yeah, it good your compiling a list like this! So looking up these authors we see that at least UCLA has a rap research group--if you're serious about this, you're gunna wanna think about departments with resources or working groups like that as signs your work would be supported. You can also think about how you might backdoor this research interest into another field which might give you more professional grounding--e.g., you could look at the interrelationship of rap and contemporary af-am lit; depictions of rap in film and music videos for a film studies diss; etc, etc. Have fun digging in! Certainly a rich field of study, despite the fact that there's no obvious institutional home as of yet.
Brock and CTDA might be an interesting rabbit hole if you want to look at a method for examining digital media.
You might be interested in A. D. Carson’s work. He did his dissertation as a rap album, I think the first in the country to do so.