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Hip hop reached its thirty-fifth year of existence in 2008. Hip hop has indeed evolved into a global phenomenon. This dissertation is grounded in Afro-modern, Afrocentric and African-centered theory and utilizes textual and content analysis. This dissertation offers a panoramic view of pre-hip hop era and hip hop era icons, iconology, archetypes and aesthetics and teases out their influence on hip hop aesthetics. I identify specific figures, movements and events within the context of African American and American folk and popular culture traditions and link them to developments within hip hop culture, discourse, and aesthetics. Because hip-hop emerged as an American phenomenon, I examine pre-hip hop American popular culture in the twentieth century such as America's World's Fairs, superhero mythology, popular culture iconography, etc. and illustrate the ways in which they served as cultural, social and historical precursors to hip hop aesthetics. Chapter 1 provides an introduction, which includes a definition of terms, statement of the problem and literature review. It also offers a perfunctory discussion of hip hop as culture. Chapter 2 examines pre-hip hop era African-American and American iconography, iconology and archetypes and the subcultures that spawned them (e.g. sports culture, comic super hero narratives, westerns, and the culture of capitalism, etc.). I explore early twentieth century popular culture, iconography, and manhood, and link them to hip-hop aesthetics. Lastly, this chapter identifies Afrocentric cross-currents within hip hop culture, which I describe as the post-Afrocentric movement in hip hop culture, and illustrate the ways in which hip hop culture grappled with the efficacy and viability of Afrocentric motifs, theory and aesthetics Chapter 3 offers a comparative analysis of blues and hip hop aesthetics. I explore gender dynamics within the context of inter-genre, call-and-response between male emcees and female neo-soul artists. Chapter 4 traces the development of hip-hop aesthetics and draws on African, American and African-American cultural practices to analyze its development. I focus on early characteristics of hip-hop culture, which are foundational components of hip-hop expression such as the influence of comic book super hero narratives. Hip-hop aesthetics are an amalgamation of post-modern, post-industrial, urban blues sensibilities filtered through African-American musical traditions. I utilize Bakari Kitwana's conceptualization of the hip hop worldview as a basis for highlighting hip hop attitudes, aesthetics, and expectations. Lastly, chapter 4 expands upon previous socio-economic discussions on hip hop culture with a focus on hip hop aesthetics and expression. In chapter 5, I identify specific pre-hip hop icons and their influence on hip-hop aesthetics. I examine the significance of the selection of these icons and their relevance to hip-hop aesthetics. This chapter explores hip-hop iconography, iconology and archetypes. I explore the significance of specific icons and archetypes within hip-hop culture and examine the socio-historical, political, and cultural implications of their selection. Icons and archetypes are integral parts of African, African-American, and American culture. I illustrate how these cultural origins are reflected within hip-hop's engagement of American popular culture icons. I also identify more recent hip hop icons and archetypes (e.g. the hater and gold digger), which operate as signifiers in hip hop narratives and aesthetics. Chapter 6 identifies specific characteristics of hip hop expression. I examine black male identity construction as it relates to hip-hop aesthetics and archetypal influences, particularly notions of 'bad" and "cool" within hip-hop culture. Perhaps more than any other African-American archetype, the badman/bad nigga archetype has survived within African-American male narratives. I explore the evolution of bad within hip hop aesthetics and offer a cultural analysis of 1984, identifying specific icons (e.g. Run-DMC), attitudes, values and trends that shaped both hip-hop culture and American popular culture. 1984 is an ideal site by which to examine the interface between race, class, sex, politics, American violence, technology, and pop culture. I examine specific cross-currents within 1980s American popular media and explore the ways in which hip hop narratives and aesthetics reappropriate and engage specific popular culture texts. I assert that not only was the framework for hip-hop aesthetics were solidified during the early 1980s, but also the framework for a new popular culture discourse effected by shifts in public policy concerning public space, racial representations and an emerging global market culture. I identify key figures, icons, archetypes, and popular media, circa 1984, and their influence on hip hop aesthetics and discourse. / African American Studies

This sandwich thesis of works published from 2010 – 2017 takes up the discursive articulation of “social media” as a mobilizing concept in relation to a variety of other concerns: authorship and popular fiction, writing and publishing, archives and everyday life, celebrity and the opaque morality of media promotion. The project addresses social networking platforms (primarily Twitter and Facebook) and those who serve and critique their interests (authors, readers, academics, “everyday people,” national archives, celebrities and filmmakers), often focusing on the “meta” of the media they take as their focus: extratexts, reviews and interviews, tweets about books and books about tweets, critical reception, etc. It considers “social media” as an idea or, more accurately, a system or constellation of ideas, a discourse or discourses beyond the mere technological. It examines the authority and impact of these discourses—not the use or usefulness of social media, but the ways these media are taken up, avoided, buttressed and manipulated in the most casual to the most politically contingent venues. In order to better comprehend and articulate the ideas, investments and ideological frameworks grounding social media discourse, this collective work traces and critically assesses the comparisons we make in an effort to render these media familiar and readable; the genealogies we construct in an effort to contextualize them and make their meanings legible; the stories we tell and the venues in which we tell them, to harness their creation and existence for other means, to authorize and deauthorize, to empower and disavow. By examining writing on and about social media, this work offers an alternative, context-specific approach to new media scholarship that, in its examination of things said and unsaid, will help inform our contemporary understanding of social media and, by extension, our social media experience. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This sandwich thesis of works published from 2010 – 2017 considers how we talk and write about social media in relation to a variety of other concerns: authorship and popular fiction, writing and publishing, archives and everyday life, celebrity and the opaque morality of media promotion. The project addresses social networking platforms (primarily Twitter and Facebook) and those who serve and critique their interests (authors, readers, academics, “everyday people,” national archives, celebrities and filmmakers), often focusing on the “meta” of the media they take as their focus: “extratexts,” reviews and interviews, tweets about books and books about tweets, critical reception, etc. By examining writing on and about social media, this work offers an alternative, context-specific approach to new media scholarship that, in its examination of things said and unsaid, will help inform our contemporary understanding of social media and, by extension, our social media experience.

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No / The papers collected in this volume are a selection from the proceedings of the Cultura Popular conference held at Manchester Metropolitan University in September 1999. The essays deal with aspects of contemporary Spanish or Latin American popular culture, and with the problematics of applying theories of Cultural Studies to these contexts. A diverse range of popular cultural forms is covered by contributors including mural art, artesanía, horror film, advertising, music, telenovela, television, literature and tourism, and case studies are drawn from Spain, Argentina, Peru and Mexico.