The Fifth Element is Knowledge: Readings on Education, Hip-Hop, and Sport helps students critically examine issues related to race, gender, identity, inequality, politics, and economics through the lenses of education, hip-hop culture, and sport. The featured readings facilitate the development of students' critical academic and psychosocial talents while connecting them to relevant issues in different social contexts. The articles are organized into seven sections. Sections I and II describe the foundations and overarching structures and conditions that shape education, hip-hop, and sport. The next three sections address the ways that athletes experience hip-hop culture. Students read articles that examine the prominent, global cultural phenomenon of hip-hop and sport and how it will continue to influence the world, now and in the future. Each section includes discussion questions to encourage further exploration of the material and spark critical conversations. Underscoring the political significance and social influence of the nexus of education, hip-hop, and sport, The Fifth Element is Knowledge is an ideal resource for courses that examine sociology, contemporary social issues, and culture.

Featuring a foreword by Tricia Rose and an Afterword by Cathy J. Cohen Barack Obama flipped the script on more than three decades of conventional wisdom when he openly embraced hip hop--often regarded as politically radioactive--in his presidential campaigns. Just as important was the extent to which hip hop artists and activists embraced him in return. This new relationship fundamentally altered the dynamics between popular culture, race, youth, and national politics. But what does this relationship look like now, and what will it look like in the decades to come? The Hip Hop & Obama Reader attempts to answer these questions by offering the first systematic analysis of hip hop and politics in the Obama era and beyond. Over the course of 14 chapters, leading scholars and activists offer new perspectives on hip hop's role in political mobilization, grassroots organizing, campaign branding, and voter turnout, as well as the ever-changing linguistic, cultural, racial, and gendered dimensions of hip hop in the U.S. and abroad. Inviting readers to reassess how Obama's presidency continues to be shaped by the voice of hip hop and, conversely, how hip hop music and politics have been shaped by Obama, The Hip Hop & Obama Reader critically examines hip hop's potential to effect social change in the 21st century. This volume is essential reading for scholars and fans of hip hop, as well as those interested in the shifting relationship between democracy and popular culture.

An account of the High School for Recording Arts in St. Paul, Minnesota that demonstrates how hip-hop-based education can be a powerful medium for cultivating creativity and engaging students.

Composition and hip hop may seem unrelated, but the connection isn't hard to make: Hip hop and rap rely on a complex of narrative practices that have clear ties to some of the best American essay writing. A Hip Hop Reader brings together work about this cultural phenomenon and provides selections that represent a variety of styles and interests.

Illuminating hip-hop as an important cultural practice and a global social movement, this collaborative project highlights the emancipatory messages and cultural work generated by the organic intellectuals of global hip-hop. Contributors describe the social realities--globalization, migration, poverty, criminalization, and racism--youth are resisting through what individuals recognize as a decolonial cultural politic. The book contributes to current scholarship in multicultural education, seeking to understand the vilification of youth (of color) for the social problems created by a global system that benefits a small minority. In an age of corporate globalization, "Hip-Hop(e)" highlights the importance of research projects that link the production of educational scholarship with the cultural activities, everyday practice, and social concerns of global youth in order to ameliorate social, economic, and political problems that transcend national boundaries. Contents include: (1) Hip-Hop(e): Introduction: The Cultural Practice and Critical Pedagogy of International Hip-Hop (Michael Viola and Brad J. Porfilio); (2) Toward a Critical Pedagogy of Possibility: Arab American Hip-Hop and Spoken Word as Cultural Action for Freedom (Muna Jamil Shami); (3) An Empire State of Mind: Hip-Hop Dance in the Philippines (J. Lorenzo Perillo); (4) Hip-Hop in Sweden--Folkbildning and a Voice for Marginalized Youth (Ove Sernhede and Johan Soderman); (5) True Fuckin' Playas: Queering Hip-Hop through Drag Performance (Leslee Grey); (6) Hip-Hop Citizens: Local Hip-Hop and the Production of Democratic Grassroots Change in Alberta (Michael B. MacDonald); (7) Hip-Hop Pedagogues: Youth as a Site of Critique, Resistance, and Transformation in France and in the Neoliberal Social World (Brad J. Porfilio and Shannon M. Porfilio); (8) The Troubadour: K'Naan, East Africa, and the Trans-National Pedagogy of Hip-Hop (Crystal Leigh Endsley and Marla Jaksch); (9) Hip-Hop and Critical Revolutionary Pedagogy: Blue Scholarship to Challenge "The Miseducation of the Filipino" (Michael Viola); (10) Public Enemies: Constructing the "Problem" of Black Masculinity in Urban Public Schools (Darius Prier); (11) Rebellion Politik: a Tale of Critical Resistance through Hip-Hop from St. Paul to Havana (Brian Lozenski); (12) Is Hip-Hop Education Another Hustle? The (Ir)Responsible Use of Hip-Hop as Pedagogy (Travis L. Gosa and Tristan G. Fields); (13) Reading, Writing, and Revolution: Spoken Word as Radical "Literocratic" Praxis in the Community College Classroom (Lisa William-White, Dana Muccular, and Gary Muccular); (14) Taking Back Our Minds: Hip-Hop Psychology's (hhp) Call for a Renaissance, Action, and Liberatory Use of Psychology in Education (Debangshu Roychoudhury and Lauren M. Garder); (15) R.U.N.M.C. (Are You an Emcee?) or Rhetoric Used Now to Make Change (Jeremy Bryan); (16) Hip-Hop as a Global Passport: Examining Global Citizenship and Digital Literacies through Hip-Hop Culture (Akesha Horton); (17) Stupid Fresh: Hip-Hop Culture, Perceived Anti-Intellectualism, and Young Black Males (Don C. Sawyer, iii); and (18) Hustlin' Consciousness: Critical Education Using Hip-Hop Modes of Knowledge Distribution (Decoteau J. Irby and Emery Petchauer).