The Quotable Black Scholar: S. Craig Watkins
S. Craig Watkins
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Hip hop’s mostly symbolic moves against establishment authority illustrated how politics can often reach beyond familiar methods and venues. Nevertheless, because hip hop’s grandest political moves have taken place on the stages of pop culture, they have not been able to directly engage or affect the institutions that impact young people’s lives. They movement’s political identity has played a subordinate role to the power and popularity of hip hop’s commercial identity.
–S. Craig Watkins in Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, And The Struggle For The Soul Of A Movement
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Biographical Notes: S. Craig Watkins is associate professor of radio-tv-film, sociology, and African American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in 1994. He earned his B.A. at the University of Texas at Austin in 1988. Hip Hop Matters is his second book. His first book, Representing: Hip Hop Culture and the Production of Black Cinema, was the first scholarly book to examine the influence of hip hop on U.S. cinema.
Posted by Ajuan Mance
Posted in Academia, African Americans, Higher Education, University of Michigan, UT Austin