Curriculum of the Mind

• In Event: Doing Diss. Differently: Black Aesthetics, Hip-Hop Scholarship, and the Dissertation

Abstract

Curriculum of the Mind is a Hip-Hop album that explores how Black male collegians at historically white institutions (HWIs) theorize and disrupt anti-Blackness in an effort to take flight or become free. Few previous studies have connected anti-Blackness to the field of higher education, and none within the field of Hip-Hop studies. This study employs a narrative inquiry approach utilizing theoretical frameworks such as Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Black Critical Theory (BlackCrit), as well as marronage. The catalyst, or medium, used in this dissertation consists of Black male collegians creating a Hip-Hop album that aesthetically illustrates their individual and collective theorizations of anti-Black experiences at HWIs.
This study required a methodological framework that pays particular attention not only to the importance of describing narratives but also to the “exploration of the social, cultural, familial, linguistic and institutional narratives within which individuals’ experiences were, and are, constituted, shaped, expressed, and enacted” (Clandinin, 2013, p. 18). Narrative inquiry is the “study of experience as story” (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006, p. 375). Clandinin (2013) states that narrative inquiry’s study of experience is both “methodology and phenomenon” (p. 16), relying on the relationship between researcher and participant.
The process of re-storying and shifting the institutional, social, and cultural narratives within the commonplaces of narrative inquiry is visible in the elements of Hip-Hop, particularly DJing, or turntablism. As Rice (2003) conveys:
The pedagogical sampler, with a computer or without a computer, allows cultural criticism to save isolated moments and then juxtapose them as a final product. The student writer looks at the various distinct moments she has collected and figures out how these moments together produce knowledge. Just as DJs often search for breaks and cuts in the music that reveal patterns, so too, does the student writer look for a pattern as a way to unite these moments into new alternative argument and critique. (p. 465)
Moreover, the creation of Hip-Hop music has the ability to provide a more nuanced connection with narrative inquiry. It allows Black male collegians to sample and deconstruct parts of experiences and memories connected to music that reflect their worldview regarding anti-Blackness and freedom, with the intent to re-story and express the personal, institutional, and cultural-temporal stories that transform or help resist oppressive, societal metanarratives, and the gratuitous violence that is placed on their bodies (Chase, 2005).
This study consisted of 14 Black male collegians who have attended, are currently enrolled at, or have graduated from an HWI in the state of Oklahoma. Participants ranged from first-year students to graduate students, as well as students who have stopped out. Participants also identified as an artist, rapper, producer, poet, activist, b-boy, disc jockey (DJ), producer, audio engineer, historian, graffiti artist, painter, graphic designer, campus leader, scholar, photographer, videographer, web designer, dance performer, musician, entrepreneur, or Hip-Hop collegian (Petchauer, 2012). Some participants identified with more than one of these categories.

Author

• Stevie Darnell Johnson, Woody Guthrie Center / Bob Dylan Center