Interdisciplinary Arts and Media Commons^™

Yeezus Is Jesuz: Examining The Socio-Hermeneutical Transmediated Images Of Jesus Employed By Kanye West, Daniel White Hodge

Journal of Hip Hop Studies

Kanye is enigmatic in many ways. His continuous reference to deity while still embracing a person like 452 makes him worth the study and effort to explore his contribution and effect in the Hip Hop cultural continuum. This article investigates, Kanye West from a theological and spiritual standpoint to provide insights from his theological aesthetics. While the ever-growing field of Hip Hop studies begins to explore religion in Hip Hop, the present work seeks to address this and develop new theologies/theories that fit both a Hip Hop and Black theology context. While the formal discipline of theology in the United …

I’M So Self-Conscious: Kanye West’S Rhetorical Wrestling With Theodicy And Nihilism, Conā S. M. Marshall

Journal of Hip Hop Studies

Whether Kanye’s plea to God is to intervene because “the devil’s trying to break [him] down,” or that he (Kanye) is “tryna keep [his] faith,” Kanye West’s lamentations communicate his wrestling of succumbing to sufferings within the world. Despite the twelve-year span between “Jesus Walks” and “Ultralight Beam,” Kanye West’s rhetoric in both songs attempt to make meaning of theodicy—suffering; while simultaneously combating nihilism—the lack of hope. As a professed Christian who articulates the multiplicity of God through Jesus and himself (Kanye West), affirmed on his 2013 album Yeezus track, “I am God,” West complicates religiosity and self-consciousness. He does …

Foreword, Joshua K. Wright

Journal of Hip Hop Studies

No abstract provided.

I Gotta Testify: Kanye West, Hip Hop, And The Church, Joshua K. Wright, Adria Y. Goldman, Vanatta S. Ford

Journal of Hip Hop Studies

The goal of this project, “I Gotta Testify: Kanye West, Hip Hop, and the Church,” is to add a new perspective to the scholarly discourse on Hip Hop and Christianity within classrooms, religious institutions, and popular culture by focusing on Kanye. We chose to focus on Kanye because he has been one of Hip Hop’s most influential artists in the past decade. Furthermore, Kanye is one of the most polarizing celebrities in America and across the globe. His music, fashion, political views, and family (which includes the Kardashians) dominate discourse on social media, blogs, television, and other forms of mass …

Introduction - Enigma Embodied: The Curious Complexity Of Kanye West, Daniel White Hodge

Journal of Hip Hop Studies

“There’s no way Hip Hop and religion work. No way!” “I just can’t see anything coming out of religion and Hip Hop. It’s like the two don’t even go together.” “Rap music is of the devil. To say there is any God in it is blasphemous!” These were direct quotes I received when I began my journey into the field of Religion and Hip Hop. I was met with firm opposition and the very notion of combining Hip Hop and religion left many angered, bewildered, confused, but definitely not speechless. It was a trifling time and the very thought of …

Meditation - On Millennials, Hip Hop, And Faith, Larrin Robertson

Journal of Hip Hop Studies

No abstract provided.

The Prosperity Gospels Of Superstardom: Kanye’S Philosophy, Catherine John, Leroy Myers, Zachary Leacock

Journal of Hip Hop Studies

No abstract provided.

Poem - Untitled, Jasmine Mans

Journal of Hip Hop Studies

No abstract provided.

Poem – Footnotes For Kanye, Jasmine Mans

Journal of Hip Hop Studies

No abstract provided.

Meditation – Yeezy’S (Impossible) Love In Fugitivity’S Strings: A Meditation On “Runaway”, James Manigault-Bryant, Lerhonda Manigault-Bryant

Journal of Hip Hop Studies

No abstract provided.

Meditation – We Killed Kanye: A Manifesto To The Old Kanye Fans, Tari Wariebi

Journal of Hip Hop Studies

No abstract provided.

Meditation - Losing Kanye, Cynthia Estremera

Journal of Hip Hop Studies

No abstract provided.

Meditation - Kanye West’S “Jesus Walks,” Black Suffering, And The Problem Of Evil, Angela M. Nelson

Journal of Hip Hop Studies

No abstract provided.

For Colored Girls And Boys Who Have Considered Suicide/ When Prayer And Good Music Weren’T Enough, Joshua K. Wright

Journal of Hip Hop Studies

April Adams, a 22-year-old Christian graduate student at Howard University, struggled with mental illness for years. Like so many blacks, April expected her faith to serve an elixir for her problems, including depression. However, her prayers were not sufficient. When she was unable to find solace in the church, she sought out an alternative source: the music of Kanye West. She shared her story in a 2016 article, “How An Ultralight Beam Helped My Dark Depression,” which she published in Abernathy magazine. April’s story speaks to the disconnect that many millennials have with the church. Nowhere in her article did …

Meditation - “Ultralight Beam”: The Gospel According To Kanye West, Jeffrey Mccune

Journal of Hip Hop Studies

No abstract provided.

Meditation From Rev. Nathaniel Yates, Metropolitan Youth Pastor, Nathaniel Yates

Journal of Hip Hop Studies

No abstract provided.

“How Great:” Reflections On Kanye’S Best Prodigy, Chance The Rapper, Joshua K. Wright

Journal of Hip Hop Studies

No abstract provided.

Closing Thoughts, Vanatta S. Ford, Adria Y. Goldman

Journal of Hip Hop Studies

No abstract provided.

Contributors

Journal of Hip Hop Studies

No abstract provided.

Kai Duc Luong Interview, Stuart Hutson

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio Born in 1975 in Phnom-Penh, KAI-DUC LUONG fled the oppressive Khmer Rouge regime from Cambodia to Vietnam to France, where his family settled in Paris, in 1978. KAI-DUC operates between Chicago and Paris. His artistic projects include video (art / doc / film), photography, and mixed media installations. His unconventional path as a self-taught outsider artist, trained in digital communication & systems engineering, gives him a unique perspective, at times questioning subject matters through the understanding of transmission and systems (e.g. the primary emotions, the five senses, the stages of grief, the art industry). His works have been …

Heather C. Lou Interview, Katie O’Reilly

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio: heather c. lou, m.ed. (she/her/hers) is an angry gemini earth dragon, multiracial, asian, queer, cisgender, disabled, survivor/surviving, depressed, and anxious womxn of color artist based in st. paul, minnesota. her mixed media pieces include watercolor, acrylic, gold paint pen, oil pastel, radical love, & hope. each piece comments on the intersections of her racial, gender, ability, & sexual identities, as they continue to shift and develop in complexity each day. her art is a form of healing, transformation, and liberation, rooted in womxnism and gender equity through a racialized borderland lens. heather works in education as an administrator. …

The Rupture Repeats, Jennifer Everett

Graduate School of Art Theses

Rupture repeats without regard. Occurring on macro and micro scales, these historical, financial, and social upheavals continue throughout our lives, remaking our worlds and leaving us to respond as best we can. Rupture is a condition of human existence. For marginalized communities and Black Americans specifically, rupture is familiar and precarious. Historically, Black people respond to the space that rupture makes through a rigorous, interdisciplinary, creative tradition which serves as a strategy for survival and a way to produce and transmit knowledge. These methods of knowledge production exist in excess of formal training and are evident of quiet and expansive …

Dance Of Exile: The Sakharoffs’ Visual Performances In Montevideo (1935–1948), Pablo Munoz Ponzo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores the life-work chronology of the dancers and choreographers Clotilde von Derp (whose surname then was Sakharoff) and Alexander Sakharoff, who were exiled in Montevideo, Uruguay, and Buenos Aires, Argentina, between 1941 and 1948. During their stay in the Rio de la Plata region, the Sakharoffs stirred up the art scene by performing extremely detailed dances with great attention to costume design. This thesis begins with a review of the reception of the dancers’ performances by the artistic and cultural circles in Montevideo, arguing that the Sakharoffs’ “queer” trajectory resonated with the Uruguayan artistic community, influencing the creation …

Reworking The White-Masculine Ideal, Steven H. Gonzalez

Art Theses and Dissertations

This text functions as an exploration of self through artistic practice, a designated space for reflection on contemporary Queer experience. In looking specifically at the permeation of the idealized-white-masculine figure as found within Western visual culture, social media and gay pornography become isolated as sites where these figures are commonly found. This line of inquiry defines how the ideal is reified through these differing digital platforms and the social implications the homogenized male form has on raced individuals. In addition to determining the image of the perfect masculine physique through research, this text expands on how its' imaged representation becomes …

Finding Place In Eureka, Ryan A. Sendejas

Toyon: Multilingual Literary Magazine

N/A

Jet Magazine: Celebrating Black Female Beauty, Jazmyn Shepherd

XULAneXUS

Once referred to as, “the Negro bible” by famed actor and comedian Redd Foxx^[1], Jet has continued to be a pioneer in representing Black Americans as beyond the stereotypes to which they are so often relegated. The magazine has not only provided accurate coverage throughout momentous Black historical movements such as the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s, the Black is Beautiful movement of the late 1960s, and the Natural Hair Movement of the 2000s, but it has also catered to the daily interests of Black Americans, such as fashion and beauty, lifestyle advice, dating advice, politics, health …

The What If Collection, Aisha J. Daniels

Theses and Dissertations

The What If Collection is a visual narrative that confronts white supremacy, the social, economic, and political ideology used to subjugate black civilization via colonial rule and enslavement in history and via structural racism today. Many white people have been socialized into a racial illiteracy that fosters white supremacy. This racial illiteracy fails to realize and understand the destructive effects of Western dominance on the rest of the world, particularly on past and present Africa and her diaspora. In response, utilizing discursive design, the collection constructs a counter-story that depicts a shift in the power structure in which the white …

Globalized Interfaces And Anticolonial Engagements With Material Technologies Of Empire: Tabita Rezaire And Morehshin Allahyari’S Works, Neelufar Franklin

Scripps Senior Theses

The virtual is far from immaterial and its expressions are multifarious. The infrastructure of a technologic-globalism has opened new pathways of desecration, created new networks of exploitation, and reinforced fraught foundations. Tabita Rezaire and Morehshin Allahyari are two artists whose radical technofeminist and new materialist practices engage with counterdiscourses in the face of the globalized interfaces of technology; from mappings of submarine fiber optic network cables or understanding water as a knowledge repository, to 3D printed queered figures of Islamic mysticism and hypertext narratives. In these anachronistic approaches to technological use and analyses, archives become possibilities for renderings of futurity …

Migiwa Orimo Interview, Jessica Ruiz

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio:
Migiwa Orimo is an artist whose primary work takes the form of installation. Orimo was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. After receiving her degree in literature and studying graphic design, she immigrated to the US in the early eighties.

In her process of creating installations, she begins by entering a space of language. Often her installations consist of disparate elements--text, painting, drawing, objects, video and sound. In attempting to establish relationships and tension between those elements, similar to constructing sentences, she explores the notions of gap, slippage, and “a realm of disjunction.”

She exhibits her work nationally; …

Kioto Aoki Interview, Austin Sandifer

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio: Kioto Aoki is a conceptual photographer and experimental filmmaker who also makes books and installations engaging the material specificity of the analogue image and image-making process. Her work explores modes of perception via nuances of the mundane, with recent focusing on perceptions of movement between the still and the moving image. She received MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently a 2017-2018 HATCH artist in residence at the Chicago Artist Coalition.

https://kiotoaoki.com/