Williams College Explores Hip-Hop Revolution Through Live Music and Films
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. - Does Williams College have DJs, MCs, B-Boys, and graffiti artists? Can graffiti be used to empower Williams students? Why does Hip-Hop dominate the college party scene? Is Hip-Hop dead? All of these questions and more will be answered at the event, "The Hip-Hop Generation: Power, Identity & Social Change," Monday, Dec. 8, at 12:30 p.m. in Griffin Hall, room 3, on the Williams campus. The event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be provided.Students from Travis Gosa's class will present short films, photography, graffiti, original rhymes, and research finding about hip-hop culture. Live music, hip-hop/urban dance, and interactive graffiti installations will be on-site.
Gosa, assistant professor of Africana Studies at Williams, was born and raised in a small mill town in West Virginia. He shares his geographical roots with such African-American thinkers as Booker T. Washington, Martin Delany, and Henry Louis "Skips" Gates. He has worked for the Maryland State Department of Education and the American Institutes for Research in Washington, D.C. as an education policy analyst.
Gosa's research examines the social and cultural worlds of African-American youth. He is interested in how black youth make sense of their own social worlds, particularly how they reconstruct identities and meanings that defy their social status.
His most recent published work, "Teacher's College Record" (2007), interprets and analyzes the achievement gap between middle-class black and white students.
Gosa received his Ph.D. in sociology with a specialization in education and social inequality from Johns Hopkins University in 2008.
The event is sponsored by the Department of Anthropology and Sociology and the Africana Studies program.
