Assignment: Gender and Sexuality Representations in Hip Hop Music

Download the assignment at Teaching Media Quarterly here: http://pubs.lib.umn.edu/tmq/vol1/iss3/3/

Professor Tia Tyree, Howard University

“This assignment is a critical examination of how rappers and consumers view gender and sexuality representations and messages in rap music, but it also forces students to understand how research paradigms shape what investigators uncover in their studies. What also makes this innovative is the classroom discussion is based on key readings, but students must come to classroom with the visual (videos or pictures) and audio to support or refute the messages and ideas within the readings. What happens is a not only a well-informed discussion, but a robust, symphonic experience where student presentations create what is a “classic battle” of visual and audio arguments based on actual rap images and sounds. With students’ lives entrenched in the Internet’s offerings, this assignment allows them to use digital resources to find texts that bring the ideas, concepts and discussions to life. It connects in a way that a traditional lecture cannot do.”

Keywords: analysis, gender, music video, people of color, race, representation, sexuality, television