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Acknowledgments
Understanding hip hop culture and ideology was a daunting task for two sociologists who began investigating the field because of student demand for a different kind of senior sociology seminar. We are grateful for the students who enrolled in our first course, “Rap, Hip Hop, Reggae, and Calypso” and our second foray into the classroom to verify that we were indeed onto something substantial, “Rap, Reggae, and Hip Hop in Society.” Those two courses—the development of specific exercises and pedagogical techniques, and the use of blogs, internet, and video downloads—enabled us to grasp some of what appealed to our students on a predominantly white campus about the urban sounds of rap and hip hop culture.
We are indebted to our Dean and then Acting Chair of the Susquehanna University Sociology and Anthropology Department, Dr. Lucien “Terry” Winegar, for allowing two faculty