Whose World Is This?: Explorations in Hip Hop, Writing, and Culture - Course Description and Theoretical Rationale

Oct 15, 2026

A course proposal and rationale for “Whose World Is This?: Explorations in Hip Hop, Writing, and Culture” by Khirsten L. Scott. It details a first-year, dialogue-centered seminar where hip hop functions as both subject and method, examining hip-hop writing, performance, and culture in a US context across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The text links course design to Black feminist pedagogies, addresses institutional diversity frameworks, and asks who survives the university and the US, including Pittsburgh’s higher-education equity context.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages13

Reading Time20 min

AccessFree to download

Course Description

Institutional Context

Theoretical Rationale

Whose World Is This?: Explorations in Hip Hop, Writing, and Culture Khirsten L. Scott Course Description “Whose World Is This?: Explorations in Hip Hop, Writing, and Culture” isan ongoing revision of a seminar I designed and taught as a graduate student instructor at the University of Louisville before moving to the University of Pittsburgh as an assistant professor. This first-year seminar—and how I use the word seminar—is to emphasize the dialogue-centered course design and enrollees, ranging from seventeen to nineteen student-contributors. Hip hop is both subject and method of this seminar. Drawing its title from Nas’s 1994 “The World Is Yours,” this seminar specifically investigates hip-hop writing, performance, and culture within a US context across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. As a medium, hip hop remains an intentional, experimental exploration of survival.The course offers an occasion to make and hold space for myself and Black life and Black culture, centered on the following: Who survives the university? Who survives the US? Institutional Context Only 2 percent of full-time professors at degree-granting postsecondary institutions in the United States are Black women (National Center for Education Statistics). At the University of Pittsburgh, as of December 2020, Black women comprise 3.3 percent of the faculty population or approximately 71 Black–identifying women, according to the university’s Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. The university notes that it “currently does not collect non–binary or transgender as a category…[but they] will collect and report this moving forward”(University of Pittsburgh) . Faculty population here includes full-time faculty employees across ranks (Faculty Dashboard), so parttime faculty and adjunct/non-contract part-time faculty are not included, rendering contingent labor invisible. Meanwhile, Pittsburgh’s Gender Equity Commission has named Pittsburgh, PA,“the worst place for Black women to live”(Howell et al. 2019, Mock, Philyaw) . Each layer of these lived and embodied realities prompts me to lean on and lean into Black feminist theories and pedagogies declaring that “Black women are inherently valuable”(Combahee River Collective) . The timing of my arrival as the English department’s first Black woman tenure-track appointee at Pitt in composition coincided with the department’s official introduction of Seminar in Composition: Topics in Diversity. The in Composition Studies 49.2 (2021): 105–117 troduction occurred alongside a number of other course designs described as having a diversity focus. Within the University’s Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences’s general education curriculum, the English department offers over 100 Seminar in Composition sections, 30 of which focus on specific curricular possibilities, such as gender studies, service-learning, education, disabilities studies, engineering, and topics in diversity. According to John Twyning, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies,“The Dietrich School faculty and undergraduate council decided to revise the requirements after realizing that the GER [General Education Requirements] did not properly reflect the world we live in today and changes were necessary”(Pitt News) . My arrival was also my introduction to the composition legacy of the “Pitt Way.” That is, the feeling expressed by Dave Bartholomae, Anthony Petrosky, and Stacey Waite in Resources for Teaching Ways of Reading as the distinctive“features and concerns that represent both a tradition of teaching and our determination to work together as a collective: the assignment sequences, the sets of readings, an emphasis on revision, a desire to represent students as intellectuals, a respect for difficulty”(24). This tradition is situated within the white writing studies imagination and furthers the white university’s imagination, which assigns value to certain kinds of knowledge production depending on the culture that produces it

FAQs

What is the seminar’s central focus and method?

The seminar investigates hip-hop writing, performance, and culture, using hip hop as both subject and method within a US context.

How does the text connect course design to institutional realities?

It highlights the underrepresentation of Black women in US faculty, local faculty demographics at the University of Pittsburgh, and how these conditions shape the need for Black feminist theories and pedagogies.

What theoretical foundations guide the seminar?

Black feminist theories and pedagogies guide the seminar, emphasizing the interdependence of action and thought, the value of Black knowledge production, and ongoing dialogue as a mechanism for learning and change.

Oct 15, 2026

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