Hip Hop Culture

Hiphop Literacies  Black Women and Girls' Lives Matter  
The Ohio State University Frank B. Hale Jr. Black Cultural Center, Main Campus
March 30-31, 2016

The purpose of the Hiphop Literacies conference is to bring together scholars, educators, activists, students, artists, and community members to dialogue on pressing social problems. This year our working conference theme is Black Women and Girls' Lives Matter. Participants of the Hiphop Literacies Conference join a community of those concerned with African American/Black, Brown and urban literacies, who are interested in challenging the sociopolitical arrangement of the relations between institutions, languages, identities, and power through engagement with local narratives of inequality and lived experience in order to critique a global system of oppression. Literacies scholars who foreground the lives of Hiphop generation youth see Hiphop as providing a framework to ground work in classrooms and communities in democratic ideals.

This year's conference illuminates issues in the struggle to engender the fight for racial justice, so that the needs of girls and women are fully addressed as we continue the fight to dismantle institutional racism and promote healing for collective empowerment of Black and Brown communities.

In addition to scheduled talks and workshops by renowned scholars, activists, cultural workers, artists and educators, the conference will host presentations and performances by scholars, students and community members. The conference will also feature a performance by a nationally recognized Hiphop artist.