![\"aar\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/543\/2016\/01\/aar.jpg\")
<\/a>Below is the Call for Papers for the Critical Approaches to Hip Hop and Religion Group of the American Academy of Religion Conference in San Antonio, Texas\u00a0November\u00a016-19, 2016.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nStatement of Purpose:\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n This Group\u2019s purpose is to provide a space for interdisciplinary, sustained, scholarly reflection and intellectual advancements at the intersections of religion and hip-hop culture. We believe the Group will assist religious and theological studies to take more seriously hip-hop culture \u2014 while expanding the conversation of hip-hop culture beyond a thin analysis of rap music. To these ends, this Group is marked by an effort to offer critical reflection on the multiplicity of the cultural practices of hip-hop culture. We also see something of value in advancing the field of religious studies through attention to how hip-hop might inform these various disciplines and methods. Understood in this way, scholarly attention to hip-hop will not transform it into a passive object of the scholar\u2019s gaze \u2014 rather, through our attention to hip-hop, it also speaks back to the work of the AAR, offering tools by which to advance theory and method in the field.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Main Session \u2013 T.H.U.G. Luv: After 400 Years of Death, What\u2019s \u2018Love\u2019 Got to Do with It?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n The Critical Approaches to Hip Hop and Religion Group solicits paper and panel proposals that critically interrogate the category of love, and its place in the academic study of religion and ethical intervention, alike. 2016 marks the twentieth anniversary of the death of prophet and poet Tupac Shakur, dead at 26 and representative of the paucity of life options (and early death) faced by African Americans. Shakur left a legacy framed in terms of T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E.\u2014The Hate You Gave Little Infants F@*s Everybody<\/a>.\u00a0For Shakur, T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E. was an identity, a cosmology, a theology, an orientation, way of life, \u201cnew form of black power,\u201d and an ideological manifest for those disenfranchised. What then, would a \u201cT.H.U.G. Luv\u201d look like when considering theologian James Cone\u2019s claim that blacks \u201chave had too much of white love\u201d (1972). In light of the ongoing assault on black bodies in the U.S. and globally, and the caustic truth telling embodied by Shakur and hip hop more generally, what rhetorical, social, theological, or critical use does \u201clove,\u201d even \u201crevolutionary love,\u201d hold for T.H.U.G.s still trapped \u201cin god\u2019s prison\u201d (Shakur, 1997). Told by white masses that love is the \u201canswer\u201d and chided by black leaders fearful of nihilism, hip hoppers tends to be skeptical of any talk of love\u2014especially a utopian type love which seems to \u201cforgive all\u201d and forget oppression; but perhaps there is still something to be said of T.H.U.G. Luv.<\/span><\/p>\n Possible proposal topics include, but are not limited to:<\/span> \u2022 Hip hop as postcolonial critique of love<\/span><\/p>\n \u2022 Interpersonal relationships within the confines of ongoing anti-black racism<\/span><\/p>\n \u2022 The social and rhetorical function of \u201clove\u201d as academic and\/or ethical intervention<\/span><\/p>\n \u2022 Love in a time of (ongoing) black & brown death<\/span><\/p>\n \u2022 Nihilism as critical theoretical posture<\/span><\/p>\n \u2022 Hip hop and revolutionary praxis<\/span><\/p>\n \u2022 Love as transgression\/border crossing and\/or boundary maintenance<\/span><\/p>\n \u2022 A systematic doctrine of T.H.U.G. Luv<\/span><\/p>\n \u2022 Loving black bodies<\/span><\/p>\n Co-Sponsored Session:\u00a0The Courage to Be . . . Alright<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n This papers session, co-sponsored by Critical Approaches to Hip Hop and Religion & the Tillich: Issues in Theology, Religion, and Culture Group is an open call for papers that will foster a cross-generational, cross-cultural conversation provoked by the unexpected coincidence of Paul Tillich and Kendrick Lamar as generational voices illumining the dogged determination to be in the face of the annihilating forces of modernity. In 1952, Paul Tillich published\u00a0The Courage to Be<\/i>, as a critique of western theology\u2019s uncritical reliance on ontological argumentation as an \u201cobjective\u201d discourse which occluded the existential moorings of faith, which was on his account the very thing which gives human life it\u2019s contours. Sixty years after the release of\u00a0Courage<\/i>, and uncannily coinciding with the anniversary of Tillich\u2019s death\u2014October 22, 2012\u2014hip hop artist Kendrick Lamar released\u00a0Good Kid, M.A.A.D City<\/i>, his first major studio album. GKMC, like 2015\u2019s\u00a0To Pimp a Butterfly<\/i>, and earlier mixtapes and independent releases, demonstrates Kendrick Lamar\u2019s deeply existential ruminations and a dogged determination to be, in face of contemporary and ongoing assault on black life and on black being the contemporary forces of modernity. Songs like \u201cAlright\u201d and \u201cI\u201d celebrate a courage to be and privilege self-affirmation in ways that are embodied, aural, and theologically-weighty, giving shape, form, and (much needed) color toThe Courage to Be<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n Possible proposal topics include, but are not limited to:<\/span><\/p>\n \u2022 Life in the midst of urban annihilation<\/span><\/p>\n \u2022 Contemporary expressions of existential theologies<\/span><\/p>\n \u2022 Hip hop and millennial appraisals of\u00a0The Courage to Be<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n \u2022 Embodied theologies and the Poetics of Hip-Hop<\/span><\/p>\n \u2022 Dogged determination to be as a site of theological beginnings<\/span><\/p>\n \u2022 Inter- and Intra-ecclesial and racial comparative theologies<\/span><\/p>\n \u2022 Social and rhetorical techniques of authorizing religious\/theological authority<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Chair<\/span><\/p>\n Steering Committee<\/span><\/p>\n Below is the Call for Papers for the Critical Approaches to Hip Hop and Religion Group of the American Academy of Religion Conference in San Antonio, Texas\u00a0November\u00a016-19, 2016.\u00a0 Statement of Purpose:\u00a0 This Group\u2019s purpose is to provide a space for interdisciplinary, sustained, scholarly reflection and intellectual advancements at the intersections of religion and hip-hop culture. 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\n\u2022 The legacy of Tupac Shakur as social critic, philosopher, and\/or theologian<\/span><\/p>\n\n
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