Tupac Conference in Atlanta

On Friday and Saturday, September 28-29, 2012, the Atlantic University Center Robert W. Woodruff library is hosting the "Tupac Amaru Shakur Collection Conference: Hip Hop, Education and Expanding the Archival Imagination."

The conference program, available here, includes exciting and robust conversations regarding the impact of Tupac Shakur specifically, and hip hop generally, on culture, law and politics.

From the Conference website:  "The Archives Research Center of the AUC Woodruff Library hourses the Tupac Amaru Shakur Collection, a rich resource for understanding the life and work of one of hip hop's brightest stars.  The Collection was deposited in the Archives in 2009, thourhg a partnership with the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation and Afeni Shakur-Davis, mother of Tupac Shakur, to make his papers available to scholars.

The Collection includes Shakur's handwritten manuscripts, including song lyrics, track listings, video and album treatments, short stories and poetry.  Other materials include manuscripts written by members of the Outlawz, media and publicity materials, correspondence and legal documents.

The Tupac Amaru Shakur Conference was designed to combine AUC Woodruff Library's mission to facilitate scholarly research and the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation's mission to encourage hip hop curriculum." 

Several contributors to "Hip Hop Law.com" will participate as speakers at this first annual event.

Hip Hop and the ABA

The September 2012 edition of the ABA Journal reports favorably on the "Hip Hop and the American Constitution" course offered last spring semester collaboratively between Drexel University Earle Mack School of Law and the West Virginia University College of Law.  In an article entitled "Hip-Hop at Law," reporter L.J. Jackson writes:

Public Enemy (in Hamburg, Germany 2000)

"Back in 1989, when Chuck D and Flavor Flav exhorted Public Enemy fans to 'Fight the Power,' it’s likely that they never envisioned their anti-establishment anthem would be deconstructed and analyzed as part of an innovative law school curriculum. But the lyrics and discographies of Public Enemy and other hip-hop artists are indeed the subjects of a recent law school seminar and a forthcoming anthology studying the intersection of the Constitution and hip-hop.  Law professors Donald Tibbs and andré cummings are working on a textbook based on the class they co-taught this spring called 'Hip-Hop and the American Constitution.' The lecture series brought an eclectic mix of law professors, formerly incarcerated people and rap artists to the classroom to discuss hip-hop’s legal implications. 'It initially was a hope and dream' to teach the class, says Tibbs of Drexel University, who conceived the idea and pitched it to cummings of West Virginia University."

The entire article can be read here:  Hip-Hop at Law


(photo courtesy of MikaV, Creative Commons License)