Exploring the Paradox of Hip-Hop Culture

Warner Pacific College's 1st Annual Diversity Lecture Series

Featuring Speakers Adam Bradley and Thomas Chatterton Williams

Adam Bradley is an associate professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he specializes in African American literature. Dr. Bradley's work is helping to define the emerging field of hip-hop poetics. From the fiction of Ralph Ellison to the lyrics of Jay-Z, Bradley explores the crosscurrents of literary and popular culture. He is the author or co-editor of several books including Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip-Hop, and The Anthology of Rap. Most recently, Dr. Bradley collaborated with rapper and actor Common on Common's memoir, One Day it Will All Make Sense. Beyond academia, Dr. Bradley's writing and commentary has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, as well as on NPR and C-SPAN. Dr. Bradley received his B.A. from Lewis & Clark College and his Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Dr. Bradley will speak on Tuesday, February 5th at 7:00 pm.

Cost: FREE!

Thomas Chatterton Williams is the author of Losing My Cool: How a Father's Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture (hardcover), and Losing My Cool: Love, Literature, and a Black Man's Escape from the Crowd (paperback). As a student at NYU, Williams' op-ed piece, "Yes, Blame Hip-Hop," struck a deep nerve when it ran in The Washington Post, generating a record-breaking volume of responses. Thomas writes for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Root, and the literary magazine n+1. Mr. Williams holds a B.A. in philosophy from Georgetown University and master's degree from the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program at New York University; he currently resides in Paris.

Mr. Williams will speak Tuesday, February 19th at 7:00 pm.

Cost: FREE