ACT co-applicant Murray Forman and Associate Professor in Media and Screen Studies at Northeastern University will present on his on-going research on ageing and hip-hop at the Center for Inter-American Studies at the University of Graz in Austria on March 17, 2015. The title of his talk is Old in the Game: Age and Aging in Hip-Hop.
The presentation, Old in the Game: Age and Aging in Hip-Hop, explores the concept of age and aging in hip-hop culture and in rap music. Exploring various analytical approaches, Forman critically examines the emergent discourses of age and aging in hip-hop and the symbolic, performative, and narrative constructs within which artists and audience members are “aged by culture” (Gullette, 2004). Old in the Game argues that turbulence abounds within contemporary hip-hop as individuals of different age cohorts interact with one another and the environment around them according to generational factors relating to experience and familiarity, operating within rules, laws, and wider cultural norms and within established hip-hop conventions. This presentation brings critical age theory to the sub-field of hip-hop studies while contributing to critical age studies by exploring hip-hop’s discourses and expressive forms and analyzing the processes through which issues of age and aging are articulated and made meaningful.