Visual Sankofarration: Speculative Visual Literacies and the Pedagogy of Hip Hop Histories

• In Event: Hip Hop in the Margins: Hip Hop, Comics, and Critical Speculative Pedagogies

Abstract

This paper examines the award winning graphic novel The Graphic History of Hip Hop as both a cultural artifact and pedagogical tool within the field of hip hop education. We situate the work at the intersection of graphic historiography, multimodal literacy, and culturally sustaining pedagogy, advancing scholarly understandings of how sequential art can function as both a historical archive and a site of critical engagement.
Objectives or Purposes
This presentation aims to:
- Analyze The Graphic History of Hip Hop as a multimodal historical text that challenges conventional historiographical methods.

- Explore its pedagogical potential for developing critical media literacy, historical consciousness, and civic engagement among secondary and postsecondary learners.

- Consider the text’s capacity to sustain and extend hip hop’s core principles—knowledge, respect, and community—within formal and informal educational contexts.

Theoretical Framework
Our analysis is informed by culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris & Alim, 2017), multimodal literacy theory (Kress, 2010), and critical race theory (Delgado & Stefancic, 2017). We also draw on the deep tradition of hip hop centered education scholarship, positioning the graphic novel as a counter-narrative that foregrounds historically marginalized voices and challenges dominant narratives about urban culture, artistry, and resistance.

Methods/Techniques/Modes of Inquiry
We employ multimodal discourse analysis (Jewitt, 2014) to examine the interplay of text, image, and design in the novel’s construction of historical meaning. This is supplemented by a close reading of narrative framing devices, iconographic motifs, and visual rhetoric, as well as paratextual materials such as interviews with the creators. We further incorporate reception analysis, drawing on classroom-based case studies where the text has been integrated into social studies and language arts curricula.

Scientific or Scholarly Significance
The Graphic History of Hip Hop is not merely a record of cultural history but an active agent in shaping historical memory and cultural literacy. Its use of the graphic novel medium enables an embodied, affective engagement with history that written text alone cannot replicate, particularly for students from communities whose histories have been systematically marginalized or distorted.
This work contributes to scholarship in hip hop education, graphic historiography, and multimodal pedagogy by demonstrating how cultural histories rendered through sequential art can enhance critical literacy and civic imagination. In bridging historical scholarship with visual storytelling, Greason and Fielder model a praxis for educators seeking to sustain hip hop’s pedagogical legacy while innovating new modes of historical engagement. The study underscores the urgency of integrating culturally relevant, multimodal resources into educational spaces, thereby expanding both the epistemological and methodological boundaries of history and literacy education.

Author

• Walter Greason, Macalester College