Religion in Hip Hop

Monica R. Miller is Assistant Professor of Religion & Africana Studies, Director of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Lehigh University, USA. Anthony B. Pinn is Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities, Professor of Religious Studies, and Director of the Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning (CERCL) at Rice University, USA.Bernard "Bun B" Freeman is an American rapper, songwriter and CERCL Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at Rice University, USA.

• Preface: Turning Nothing Into Something is God Work': Holiness and Hurt in the Hood, Michael Eric Dyson (University of Georgetown, USA)Introduction: Context and Other Considerations, Anthony B. Pinn (Rice University, USA) & Monica R. Miller (Lehigh University, USA)Part 1: Hip Hop on Religion as/for the Embodied Self 1. Searching for Self: Religion and the Creative Quest for Self in the Art of Erykah Badu, Margarita Simon-Guillory (University of Rochester, USA)2. Methods for the Prophetic: Tupac Shakur, Lauryn Hill, and the Case for Ethnolifehistory, Daniel White-Hodge (North Park University, USA)3. Existentialist Transvaluation and Hip-Hop’s Syncretic Religiosity, Julius D. Bailey (Wittenberg University, USA)4. God Complex, Complex gods, or God's Complex? Jay Z, Poor Black Youth, and Making 'The Struggle' Divine, Michael Eric Dyson (Georgetown University, USA)Part 2: Hip Hop on Religion and the 'Other' 5. A PARTICULAR PAC: Ontological Ruptures and the Posthumous Presence of Tupac Shakur, James Braxton Peterson (Lehigh University, USA)6. *iRoamThruZones* Follow Me! #NOWTHATSRELIGIONANDHIPHOP: Mapping the Terrain of Religion and Hip Hop in Cyberspace, Elonda Clay, Archivist and Digital Librarian (Philander Smith College, USA) & Ph.D. Candidate (VU University, The Netherlands) 7. Mapping Space and Place in the Analysis of Hip Hop and Religion: Houston As An Example, Maco L. Faniel, author of Hip Hop in Houston: The Origin and the Legacy (Houston, Texas, USA) 8. Imperial Whiteness Meets Hip-Hop Blackness: A Spiritual Phenomenology of the Hegemonic Body in 21st Century USA, James W. Perkinson (Ecumenical Theological Seminary, USA)9. Bun B on Religion and Hip Hop, Bernard “Bun B” Freeman (Rice University, USA)Part 3: Approaches to Religion in Hip Hop on the Margins10. Hip Hop and Humanism: Thinking Against New (and Old) Fundamentalisms, Greg Dimitriadis (University at Buffalo, SUNY, USA,)11. Conspiracy is the Sincerest Form of Flattery: Hip-Hop, Aesthetics, and Suspicious Spiritualities, John L. Jackson, Jr. (University of Pennsylvania, USA)12. Constructing Constellations: Frankfurt School, Lupe Fiasco, and the Promise of Weak Redemption, Joseph Winters (UNC Charlotte, USA)13. Zombies in the ‘Hood: Rap Music, Camusian Absurdity, and the Structuring of Death, Anthony B. Pinn (Rice University, USA)14. Real Recognize Real: Aporetic Flows and the Presence of New Black Godz in Hip Hop, Monica R. Miller (Lehigh University, USA)Concluding Thoughts: The Future of the Study of Religion in/and Hip Hop, Monica R. Miller (Lehigh University, USA) & Anthony B. Pinn (Rice University, USA)Afterword: An Insider Perspective, Bernard 'Bun B' Freeman (Rice University, USA)

A great series of essays destined to advance and expand the field of hip-hop and religion. This collection belongs on the shelves of hip-hop heads and religious scholars alike.