2023 - 2024 Humanities Labs

Race, Spirituality, and Hip-Hop

Professor Gastón Espinosa

This lab explores the revolutionary intersections of race, religion and Hip-Hop from 1960-Present. It examines how Black and racial-ethnic Hip-Hop, R&B, and other artists (Latino, Muslim, Jewish) have kept alive the civil rights and black power critiques of anti-Black racism, challenged racist narratives, stereotypes, and the social construction of race-ethnicity, and used their music as a form of religious, political, and social protest, criticism, and commentary. It explores how they leveraged their superstar power and platforms to promote racial justice, cultural empowerment, religious expression, and revolutionary social change and then assesses their struggles with commercialization, domestication, and harmful social practices. We will also explore theories about music, religion, and social change, spiritual intelligence (can spirituality intelligence help explain why some activists and artists are more successful than others?), and music as vehicle for civil rights and social protest against racism and other forms of social injustice. In addition to working on independent projects of their own design, members of the lab will collaborate to create a documentary history reader.

Dates/times for the lab will be decided based on best availability of the lab members. The first lab meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, September 19th from 12:15pm to 2:15pm.  If you can only attend part of the first lab meeting due to class, it is still fine to apply since the lab meetings will not normally meet at this time.

Application Deadline: Sunday, September 10th at 5PM

Research Assistants

Lincoln Aftergood ’26

Jasper Datta ’26

Nathan Dhanani ’26

Elijah Emory-Muhammad ’26

Leo Furr ’26

Louis Layman ’26

Jaida McCullough ’27

Zaynamin Murtaza ’26

Andrew Rizko ’26

Diana Simonds ’24

David Taylor ’26