James Brown once sang: “This is a man´s world”. This seems all the more the case in rap. Masculinity is central to American rap. The contours of constructed masculinity are reflected both in the language, as well as in the codes, the visual symbols of rap. Their battlefield is a body designed to produce dominance, demarcating it from homosexuality and femininity. Its construction creates contradictions and trenches in the development of a radical concept of black freedom. The lecture will trace historical and current threads of black masculinity in American rap and delineate perspectives of self-affirmation.

Introduction by Dr. Onur Suzan Nobrega

Tricia Rose is Professor for Africa Studies at the Brown University in Rhode Island. She has published numerous books on US-American hip-hop culture and moreover also writes as a journalist about gender, racism and blackness.

Dr. Onur Suzan Nobrega, lecturer at the Institute of Sociology, Focus Culture and Migration at Goethe-University Frankfurt, gained her PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London in Media and Cultural Studies, where she taught as a lecturer prior to her assignment at Goethe-University. Nobrega worked previously as a cultural journalist, tour manager for the Afro-German music project Brothers Keepers and curator for the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse theatre in Berlin.

Foto: Richard Howard Photography