The Sonic South, Southern Black Feminist Hip-Hop Poetics, and ABER (Arts Based Educational Research) via the #HotGirlSemesterSyllabus and Accompaniment

• In Event: Sound Arts, Hip-Hop, and Arts-Based Educational Research: A Performatively Corrective Counter-Factual

Abstract

Drawing from the Author’s (forthcoming) work reflecting on the #HotGirlSemesterSyllabus (Overby et al., 2023) and Megan Thee Stallion’s contributions to art, Black feminism, and the Sonic South, this paper explores the development and potential arts-based teaching and learning uses of the #HotGirlSemesterSyllabus Accompaniment: Tracks, Poems, and Art (Author, forthcoming). The accompaniment highlights Black women artists and, at the time of this writing, included 32 Megan Thee Stallion Tracks, 107 Supporting Tracks, 29 Guiding Poems, and 31 Guiding Art references organized by theme, date, and artist and representing diverse artists and genres.

The #HotGirlSemesterSyllabus (Overby et al., 2023) is grounded in Black feminist (Collins, 1990) and hip hop feminist (Morgan, 1999) scholarship and is a relevant resource to explore Megan Thee Stallion’s (Megan Pete) work as the authors emphasize “center[ing] the creative” to empower and promote discourse. I envision using the syllabus in a course titled “Southern Black Feminist Poet(ic)s”, where poet(ic)s” underscores the study of the poet as artist and the study of poetics as the intersection of artistry, theory, and praxis. In outlining the course, I center poetry and other artistry crafted in the tradition of Black feminist epistemologies to include exploration of the Sonic South. Applying the southern lens allows me to honor my identity as a southern Black woman and honor gifted southern Black feminist poet(ic)s who wro/ite in the southern tradition, like writers Nikki Giovanni, Nikki Finney, Alice Walker, Gayl Jones, and Zora Neal Hurston; rappers, Chika (Jane Chika Oranika), GloRilla (Gloria Hallelujah Woods), Mia X (Mia Young), Missy Elliott (Melissa Elliott), Rapsody (Marlanna Evans), and Gangsta Boo (Lola Mitchell); Alabama’s Poet Laureate, Ashley Jones; spoken word artist, Sha’Condria “iCon” Sibley; scholar and ancestor, bell hooks; and scholar, Robin Boylorn, to name a few.

Sullivan (2021) described Black feminist poetics as “a model of poetics that accommodates multiple forms of linguistics and bodily expression” (p. 5). Southern Black feminist poetics write to challenge racial, gendered, and geographic oppression. We tell our stories like only we can, using lenses that only we have, as are the sounds of the Sonic South. Thee Southern Black feminist poetic” honors the intersection of artistry, theory and praxis in her work; and my use of “southern Black feminist poet(ic)s” calls attention to both the poets as artists and as poetics who are attentive to Black feminist concerns through the embodiment of Black feminist epistemologies.

Emphasizing her southern identity are Megan’s rich southern accent, ChopNotSlop remixes, and selection of “Tina Snow” as her alter-ego, paying homage to Houston rapper “Pimp C” (Chad Lamont Butler), who she credits as being her favorite rapper and one of her most significant inspirations. Southern Black feminist poet(ic)s in hip hop remind listeners that, as André Benjamin (André 3000) (1995) exclaimed at the Source Awards, “The South got something to say!”. They also remind listeners that southern Black feminist poet(ic)s also got something Sonic to say.

Author

• Qiana Cutts Givens, Mississippi State University