Hip-Hop Pedagogies and the Politics of Schooling in Canada

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 47

Abstract

Although hip hop studies are increasingly explored as teaching tools in many American classrooms, Canadian classrooms have not engaged with hip hop narratives in the same way. The relative absence of hip hop in Canadian classrooms speaks to two intertwining processes: first, the ways in which the longstanding presence of black populations in the nation are continually erased from national narratives; and, second, the ways in which more contemporary representations of black communities in Canada are understood to be fleeting and/or deportable (McKittrick 2006; Walcott 2000; Burman 2010). Hip hop undoes colonial and anti-black Canadian logics and celebrates subversive and non-normative sexualities. Hip hop lyrics are critical pedagogies and undervalued “lesson plans” for Canadian undergraduate classrooms.

Author

• Maya Stitski, Ryerson University