Entertainment

Rice University Launches Religion, Hip-Hop Culture Online Course

Published

9 years ago

March 3, 2015

Oakland Post

Free Class by Anthony Pinn and Bernard ‘Bun B’ Freeman Kicks off March 24

Bernard ‘Bun B’ Freeman (left) and Anthony Pinn (Courtesy Photo)

by Jeffrey L. Boney
Special to the NNPA from the Houston Forward Times

Religion and Hip-Hop Culture is a new and free edX online course being offered by Rice University’s Center for Digital Learning and Scholarship. The class will feature Religious Studies Professor and Founding Director of the Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning (CERCL) Anthony Pinn and CERCL Distinguished Visiting Lecturer and Grammy nominee Bernard “Bun B” Freeman. The course is now open for enrollment and will begin March 24th.

The Religion and Hip-Hop Culture course, or RELI157x, is the first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for Pinn and Bun B. The online course is built upon and expands the popular class they have taught together at Rice University. The Religion and Hip-Hop Culture course will explore questions such as – What is religion? What is hip-hop? Are they the same thing? Do they overlap?

Over the six-week course, Pinn and Bun B will provide the tools necessary to let students critically engage the world in which they live and answer these questions for themselves.

Bernard “Bun B” Freeman, who rose to fame in the influential rap duo UGK, has won numerous awards and has been nominated for a Grammy. Bun B has also been featured on albums with several other well-known artists. His most notable guest appearances were on the Jay-Z hit single “Big Pimpin” and Beyonce’s chart-topper “Check On It.” Bun B’s solo projects include “Trill” (which opened at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 200 and also peaked at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-hop Album chart) and “Trill O.G.,” which was released in 2010.

“This course gave me the opportunity to let people see a side of hip-hop that isn’t always discussed,” Bun B said. “We’ve started a conversation that cannot end until people have a better understanding of who we are and what we do.”

Anthony Pinn is the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and professor of religious studies at Rice University, where he is also the founding director of the Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning. Pinn is also the director of research for the Institute for Humanist Studies, a Washington, D.C. think tank. His interests include the intersections of popular culture and religious identity and nontheistic trends in American public life. He is the author and editor of over 30 books, including “Noise and Spirit: The Religious and Spiritual Sensibilities of Rap Music” (2003) and “The Hip-Hop and Religion Reader” (2014).

“Our classroom course at Rice went so well that people off campus were contacting us and asking us about the course and how they could take it,” Pinn said. “Working with Bun in the classroom, it became clear that there were ways of learning and teaching that we hadn’t tapped. The MOOC gave us a way to be even more creative and innovative in terms of how we link the rest of world with the cultural richness and diversity of Houston to get information across.”

The course will start with some basic assumptions, the most important being a willingness to think about hip-hop and religion as cultures that wrestle with the huge questions of human existence. Pinn and Bun B said that students will also need to be open to the possibility of hip-hop as a language through which complex questions, including some about religion, are presented, explored and interpreted.

“This course takes two important cultural developments in human history and looks at their points of commonality and their differences,” Pinn said. “The idea is to do that in a way that gives students a vocabulary, grammar, ideas and concepts that will allow them to think about and work on related issues within their own context.”

The Religion and Hip-Hop Culture course will use a mix of videos, readings, music, images, stories and behind-the-scenes insider perspectives. Pinn and Bun B are leading collaborations between Rice University and local institutions to engage the Houston community in conversations inspired by topics in the course.

This is the 23rd MOOC offered by Rice’s Center for Digital Learning and Scholarship.

“This course reflects the university’s commitment to experimental teaching and research that engages dynamically with Houston arts partners,” said Caroline Levander, Rice’s vice president for strategic initiatives and digital education. “The result is a course that showcases the cultural innovation for which Rice and Houston are known.”

“We have been honored to work with Rice University on MOOCs ranging from high school- to college-level courses,” said Anant Agarwal, CEO of edX. “With Religion and Hip-Hop Culture, together we are enabling the global learning community to examine the intersection of two vital areas — religion and music — that are so deeply rooted in cultures around the world.”

Students still have time to sign up for Pinn and Bun B’s Religion and Hip-Hop Culture course by visiting the edX course page at http://online.rice.edu/mooc/course/religion-and-hip-hop-culture.

For more information on all of Rice University’s online classes, visit http://online.rice.edu/about.

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Oakland Post: Week of April 17 – 23, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of April 17 – 23, 2024

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April 19, 2024

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O.J. Simpson, 76, Dies of Prostate Cancer

Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson, who rose to fame as a college football player who went on to the NFL and parlayed his talents in acting and sportscasting, succumbed to prostate cancer on April 10, his family announced.

Published

7 days ago

April 17, 2024

Oakland Post

Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson. Wikipedia photo

By Post Staff

Born and raised in San Francisco, the Galileo High School graduate was recruited by the University of Southern California after he was on a winning Junior College All-American team.

At USC, he gained wide acclaim as a running back leading to him becoming the No. 1 pick in the AFL-NFL draft in 1969 and joining the Buffalo Bills, where he had demanded – and received — the largest contract in professional sports history: $650,000 over five years. In 1978, the Bills traded Simpson to his hometown team, the San Francisco 49ers, retiring from the game in 1979.

Simpson’s acting career had begun before his pro football career with small parts in 1960s TV (“Dragnet”) before “Roots” and film (“The Klansman,” “The Towering Inferno,” Capricorn One”).

He was also a commentator for “Monday Night Football,” and “The NFL on NBC,” and in the mid-1970s Simpson’s good looks and amiability made him, according to People magazine, “the first b\Black athlete to become a bona fide lovable media superstar.”

The Hertz rent-a-car commercials raised his recognition factor while raising Hertz’s profit by than 50%, making him critical to the company’s bottom line.

It could be said that even more than his success as a football star, the commercials of his running through airports endeared him to the Black community at a time when it was still unusual for a Black person to represent a national, mainstream company.

He remained on Hertz team into the 1990s while also getting income endorsing Pioneer Chicken, Honey Baked Ham and Calistoga water company products and running O.J. Simpson Enterprises, which owned hotels and restaurants.

He married childhood sweetheart Marguerite Whitley when he was 19 and became the father of three children. Before he divorced in 1979, he met waitress and beauty queen Nicole Brown, who he would marry in 1985. A stormy relationship before, during and after their marriage ended, it would lead to a highway car chase as police sought to arrest Simpson for the murder by stabbing of Brown and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994.

The pursuit, arrest, and trial of Simpson were among the most widely publicized events in American history, Wikipedia reported.

Characterized as the “Trial of the Century,” he was acquitted by a jury in 1995 but found liable in the amount of $33 million in a civil action filed by the victims’ families three years later.

Simpson would be ensnared in the criminal justice system 12 years later when he was arrested after forcing his way into a Las Vegas hotel room to recover sports memorabilia he believed belonged to him.

In 2008, he received a sentence of 33 years and was paroled nine years later in 2017.

When his death was announced, Simpson’s accomplishments and downfalls were acknowledged.

Sports analyst Christine Brennan said: “… Even if you didn’t love football, you knew O.J. because of his ability to transcend sports and of course become the businessman and the pitchman that he was.

“And then the trial, and the civil trial, the civil case he lost, and the fall from grace that was extraordinary and well-deserved, absolutely self-induced, and a man that would never be seen the same again,” she added.

“OJ Simpson played an important role in exposing the racial divisions in America,” attorney Alan Dershowitz, an adviser on Simpson’s legal “dream team” told the Associated Press by telephone. “His trial also exposed police corruption among some officials in the Los Angeles Police Department. He will leave a mixed legacy. Great athlete. Many people think he was guilty. Some think he was innocent.”

“Cookie and I are praying for O.J. Simpson’s children … and his grandchildren following his passing. I know this is a difficult time,” Magic Johnson said on X.

“I feel that the system failed Nicole Brown Simpson and failed battered women everywhere,” attorney Gloria Allred, who once represented Nicole’s family, told ABC News. “I don’t mourn for O.J. Simpson. I do mourn for Nicole Brown Simpson and her family, and they should be remembered.”

Simpson was diagnosed with prostate cancer about a year ago and was undergoing chemotherapy treatment, according to Pro Football Hall of Fame President Jim Porter. He died in his Las Vegas, Nevada, home with his family at his side.

He is survived by four children: Arnelle and Jason from his first marriage and Sydney and Justin from his second marriage. He was predeceased son, Aaren, who drowned in a family swimming pool in 1979.

Sources for this report include Wikipedia, ABC News, Associated Press, and X.