def professor joins Boze

The def professor joins Boze (co-founder of Club Knowledge & producer with Hairdoo) and hosts of the TalkBack show on PCTV (Peralta Community College Television) to talk about Club Knowledge's Malcolm X Critical Consciousness Conference, the def prof's Hiphop courses taught at Laney College, Hiphop scholarship and culture, the Hiphop Archive as an academic resource and gender equity issues in Hiphop. This show was taped in early April of 2005.

The def prof was a faculty advisor and member of Club Knowledge, which was a unique student organization with a community-based organizational component. In addition to hosting the annual conference, the organization met at people's homes in the Oakland community to discuss and plan action to solve community problems and community pains.

Club Knowledge was conceptualized by Miesha Hillard, who is now a practicing nurse in Oakland. Other very active founding members who came after Ms. Hillard include Curtis "Boze" Riley and Danae Martinez as well as many others. Ms. Martinez is the person who conceptualized the first Malcolm X conference, and she will soon complete her BA in Africana Studies at SFSU and plans to obtain PhD in the field. These students and many more put their hearts and souls into imperative community organizing that has left a lasting impact on the memories of Bay Area residents. There will be another post about Hiphop courses at Laney & the Club Knowledge work.

def professor talks with teens

In this episode of Rites of Passage, a unique digital media project conceptualized by Charity Tooze, the def professor discusses gender and sexuality issues in Hiphop with high school students.

The key point in this discussion is to break out of binaries and totalized identities. That is, for example, David Banner shouldn't get a pass on his sexist rhetoric because he is racially conscious or critical towards class inequalities in certain lyrics and practices. Race does not trump sexual or gendered identities when it comes to human equality. Furthermore, the idea that women promote or "ask for" sexist harassment and abuse when they explore and perform their basic human right to sexuality is outmoded. Sexism will not end in Hiphop if women "put more clothes on" and it is sexist to totalize the idea of sexism into "women without clothes" or to put unrealistic binaries on women's behavior, otherwise known as the "queen" vs. "ho" dichotomy.

The def professor was one week away form her due date when this was taped-- so that is a cameo from her son Xola in the video :)