Angela M. Nelson on Rap, Percussion, and Theology

From LawRhetoricandDebate.org: 

Angela M. Nelson (Bowling Green State University – Department of Popular Culture) has published “Put Your Hands Together”: The Theological Meaning of Percussion and Percussiveness in Rap Music (Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture (1900 to the present), Vol. 10, No. 1, Spring 2011). Here is a sample:

A framework for studying rap music is related to the social and artistic textures of African-American popular culture. These textures are best understood through the concept of repertoire (Hall 289) and relate to the aesthetic beliefs and values of Africana people. Rap music is a product of popular culture that is drawn from an African-American cultural repertoire, which consists of the specific devices, techniques, ideologies, expressive art forms, or products of people of Africana descent that influence part of their culture (whether as context, texture, or text). Often derived from the folk tradition (see Soitos 37) and dominant culture, these components form a foundation of a black aesthetic and are used to create black popular cultural products. Religion, theology, and spirituality as they relate to beliefs and values lie within the social textures of rap music. Rhythm, percussiveness, and call-response lie within the artistic textures, or cultural repertoire, of rap music as well.

Call for Submissions - Iowa Law's Journal of Gender, Race & Justice

The Journal of Gender, Race & Justice is seeking innovative scholarship for Volume 16. The Journal is dedicated to the living discussion of feminist inquiry and critical race analysis in legal scholarship. We explore how people are classified, stratified, ignored and singled out under the law because of race, sex, gender, economic class, ability, sexual identity and the multitude of labels applied to us. The Journal would like to invite legal authors of all perspectives to submit proposals for articles to fill Volume 16 of our publication.

For more information about the Journal please see: http://blogs.law.uiowa.edu/jgrj.

Please send article or proposal submissions, along with your curriculum vitae to Whitney Smith at whitney-e-smith@uiowa.edu

The deadline for submission of proposals is January 30, 2012.

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"The Journal of Gender, Race & Justice is not for the weak of heart or the timid in spirit. Feminist inquiry and critical race analysis are the touchstones of our endeavor. Our building blocks are new forms of analysis that reach beyond traditional conceptions of legal thought. We challenge our writers, our readers, and ourselves to question who we are and how the law defines us. We strive to be a transformative experience. In a spirit of openness, we explore how we are classified, stratified, ignored and singled out under the law because of our race, sex, gender economic class, ability, sexual identity and the multitude of labels applied to us. Identity is a matrix of experiences; when the law fails to recognize any one facet of our identity, both the law and the person lose invaluable dimension. Our challenge is to examine how we negotiate our identities, how the legal system negotiates them for us and how these negotiations affect our ability to attain justice."