Thursday, April 7, 2011

Weeping while Teaching

The Matron is currently teaching a class called Race, Gender, and American Culture. Yours truly is the sole faculty member in the Gender and Women Studies department at her college.

Everyday, course content in the above class brings at least one person to tears. The Matron has handed out plenty of tissues (she brings a box every day and is now sort of proud of her track record of hysteria) and heard a lot of personal stories. Most of these students are first generation college students, immigrants, poor. The Matron loves each and every one. Well, mostly.

Currently, the class is analyzing rap and hip hop to examine how the intersections of race, class, gender and heterosexuality operate in popular culture.

Students offered a couple of 'underground' links to revolutionary rap. Here they are:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lCPXEARpE8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7Vl0peys90

Thanks to these students for helping the Matron during her dry spell AND allowing her to teach 24/7. She imagines most blog readers are not 19 years old and here's a glimpse into the world of young people who care about the well-being of all people.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I especially loved the second link. My son spent a year in Zapatista territory in Mexico as a volunteer teacher; he reveled in that stuff. Personally, I have far more empathy with the people he lived among and with those who are pictured in your video than with the rich people whose tax returns I prepare every day..

Casey said...

I'd like to share link too...
This a local hip hop artist named Heidi Barton Stink. She is a white, transgender woman who writes positive hip-hop with a social justice queer rights focus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTTMcd4Z7oc

JCK said...

What a coup that you get to tap into their young souls and they get to share their music.

Xtreme English said...

illuminating! many thanks!!