Upcoming Talk: Critical Hip-Hop Ill-Literacies, U Ottawa

Excellence in Education Lecture Series

Wednesday, March 6, 2013, 6:30 p.m.

Critical Hip-Hop Ill-Literacies: Remixing Culture, Language, and the
Politics of
Boundaries in Education

By Awad Ibrahim, PhD

It is high time we re-thought our notion of literacy! At a time when
education is
becoming highly standardized and test-oriented, and language is becoming
normative
and prescriptively grammatical, I argue that the hip hop generation is
"grammaticalizing" both language and culture. They are flipping the script
and
standardizing their own language, where ill and sick become "sensational" and
"skillful" and where "Damn, that cat is ill!" means "That poet is incredibly
skilled." I argue that if a language teacher does not know this, he or she
needs to
become literate—not the other way around. Using DJ-ing as a metaphor and
re-mixing
as an analytic vehicle, I attempt to rethink the concept of literacy through
"ill-literacy" and the boundaries of education through hip hop culture and
language.
Welcome to the poetics of critical hip hop ill-literacies!

Alumni Auditorium, University Centre
85 University Street, Ottawa

The University of Ottawa's Faculty of Education, Ontario's first bilingual
teacher
training institution, remains committed to promoting excellence in
teaching and
research, now and forever. Launched in 2011-2012 to mark its 45th
anniversary, the
Faculty of Education continues the Excellence in Education lecture Series.
These
lectures aim to share the Faculty professors' exceptional research
expertise and to
provide a better understanding of issues that affect us all.

Lectures presented throughout the year are free and open to the public.