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

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium explores the intersections of hip hop culture and sequential graphic narratives as powerful sites for culturally sustaining pedagogy, critical literacy, and civic engagement. Presentations examine superhero media and Black adolescent literacies, remix pedagogy grounded in hip hop and Black feminist thought, graphic historiography in The Graphic History of Hip Hop, graffiti and comics as multimodal literacies, and a DEI framework merging hip hop with superhero narratives. Together, these studies demonstrate how hip hop’s aesthetics, epistemologies, and community-centered practices can resist erasure, challenge deficit narratives, and inspire radical imagination in educational contexts. Bridging literacy studies, performance, and curriculum theory, the session offers educators and researchers interdisciplinary models for reimagining classrooms as spaces of cultural affirmation, resistance, and possibility.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Hip Hop Theories, Praxis & Pedagogies

Chair

• Wayne Au, University of Washington - Bothell

Papers

• Moon Girl Magic: Black Youth Art and Musical Motivations via Graphic Novels and Pop Culture - Christian M. Hines, Texas State University

• “Nah, Imma do my own thing”: Performing Remix Pedagogy Grounded in Hip-Hop Culture and Black Feminist Thought - Sasha Sanders, California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo

• Visual Sankofarration: Speculative Visual Literacies and the Pedagogy of Hip Hop Histories - Walter Greason, Macalester College

• Paint, Panels, and Possibilities: Graffiti, Comics, and Critical Multimodal Literacies in Educational Research - Michael B. Dando, St. Cloud State University

• Rhymes, Resistance, and the Rise of the Superhero in the Classroom: A Critical Pedagogical Vision for DEI - Mike Nguyen, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering

Session Organizer

• Michael B. Dando, St. Cloud State University

Discussant

• Tasha Iglesias, Utah State University