This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
And Finally
Sociology should always start with Jay-Z
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 6 December 2011
Fancy a degree in Jay-Z? Well it rhymes, so why wouldn’t you? In which case, get yourself to Georgetown University, Washington DC, where there isn’t actually an entire degree based around the hip hop icon, but there is a specific course taught by the college’s sociology department called ‘The Sociology Of Hip Hop: Jay Z’.
But watch out, the university’s Professor Michael Dyson admits that the course is really about racial and gender identity, sexuality, capitalism and economic inequality, it just uses the Roc Nation rapper as a way of tricking students into discussing such academic themes. You know, just like what Jesus did. Sort of.
Dyson told Fox News: “[This] class confronts topics present in any sociology course: racial and gender identity, sexuality, capitalism and economic inequality. It just happens to have an interesting object of engagement in Jay-Z – and what better way to meet people where they are? It’s like Jesus talking to the woman at the well. You ask for a drink of water, then you get into some theological discussions”.
Dyson says that Jay-Z is particularly interesting because of the diversity of his business ventures, not to mention the “cross-cultural” appeal of his music, and the “lyrical prowess” he demonstrates in articulating contemporary black culture and his place in it. The prof adds: “I think he’s an icon of American excellence”.
