Faculty Fellows' Lunch Featuring H. Samy Alim

H. Samy Alim: "Freestyle Rap Battles in LA and Cape Town: Challenging White Dominance While Marginalizing Other Classed, Gendered and Sexualized Identities."

Alim explores the improvised freestyle rap battles by young men in Los Angeles and Cape Town through comparative analyses of the linguistic performance of gender, race and ethnicity. While these youth, across both contexts, temporarily transform social meanings attached to race and ethnicity in these verbal duels, a more nuanced examination suggests that they challenge some forms of dominance while (re)producing others. Specifically, a particular kind of Blackness/Colouredness (masculine, working-class, local, street-affiliated and heterosexual) that both challenges White domination as it marginalizes other classed, gendered and sexualized identities.

H. Samy Alim is Professor Education: language, race, ethnicity -- Hip Hop Culture, Professor of Anthropology and Linquistics (by courtesy) and Director of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts.