Cornell professor to release new edited work on hip pop and politics

Travis Gosa, assistant professor of Africana Studies, together with Erik Nielson (University of Richmond) will release their new edited volume “The Hip Hop & Obama Reader” (Oxford University Press), this November.

“The Hip Hop & Obama Reader” is the first hip hop anthology to center on contemporary politics, activism, and social change.  The volume includes a range of new perspectives from leading scholars, journalists, and activists who examine the shifting relationship between popular culture, race, youth and national politics through a systematic analysis of hip hop and politics during the Obama era.

“The Hip Hop & Obama Reader” explores how Barack Obama openly embraced hip hop during his presidential campaigns, and how artists embraced him in return, fundamentally changing the relationship between hip hop and politics in the Obama era and beyond. Hip hop is now altering political mobilization, grassroots organizing, campaign branding, and voter turnout, as the book explores, while politics is altering hip hop’s dimensions and scope in terms of linguistics, culture, race, and gender – both domestically and internationally. 

A sonic companion to the anthology in the form of a music playlist can be found here.