Curriculum of the Mind: Research as Performance and Community-Based Artistry

• In Event: Futuring Scholarly Expression Through Sound, Sound Design, and Music: A Listening Session with Liner Notes

Abstract

Curriculum of the Mind is a fourteen track, scholarly Hip Hop album created with Black male collegians navigating historically white institutions in Oklahoma. The project includes an album, lyrics, two music videos, five part documentary series, auditory liner notes in the form of podcast clips, and a live performance project. Merging performance, research, and community-based artistry, the project explores how college students articulate freedom and confront anti-Blackness through sonic storytelling. Developed collaboratively in a "studio as research space," Curriculum of the Mind situates co-researchers as critical scholars, blending beats, narratives, and cultural memory to challenge erasure and systemic inequities in higher education. This interactive open access monograph, under contract with the University of Michigan Press, invites scholars and practitioners to experience research as lived sound: reshaping how Hip Hop scholarship can be created, performed, and preserved.

Author

• Stevie D. Johnson, The Ohio State University