Kanye West might not have been the ideal college student, but that hasn’t stop him from becoming the subject of his very own college course. A professor at Georgia State University has put together a class on Kanye West —and his place in American cultural history.
Dr. Scott Heath is an English Language and Literature professor who believes that hip hop should be taught in critical discourse just like any other form of writing. His class is called “Kanye Versus Everybody: Black Poetry and Poetics from Hughes to Hip-Hop,” and it puts Ye’s narrative in context within American culture.
“I think that young writers around the world and especially young black writers are more prolific than they’ve ever been,” Heath told the Fader. “It just so happens that they’re writing to a beat.”
Heath noted that Kanye makes the perfect subject for a study of hip hop because he takes his work so seriously, and he’s keen on shaping not just music but culture as a whole. “He’s one of the few musicians that you get to hear actually talk about hip-hop as art,” said the professor, who draws connections between West and historical black figures like the poet Langston Hughes in his course.
Sounds like one class that we would never drop out of!
