(W)raps of consciousness: articulating women's rights through hip hop in the Middle East and North Africa region

Although hip hop culture has widely been acknowledged as a global cultural movement, little attention has been given to women’s participation in various parts of the world and how this participation interacts with and impacts the lives of other women. In this dissertation, I use the lenses of postcolonial aesthetics (McCarthy and Dimitriadi, 2000; Dhillon, 2014), U.S. third world feminist studies (Sandoval, 1991; Spivak, 1985; Mansour, 2016) and hip hop feminist studies (Morgan, 1999; Pough, 2004; Brown, 2013; Durham, 2013) to examine the diverse lived experiences of girls and women in the Middle East and North Africa region through the work of seven female rappers: Shadia Mansour (Palestine), Malikah (Lebanon), Soutlana (Morocco), Soska (Egypt), Myam Mahmoud (Egypt), Amani (Yemen), and Justina (Iran). Representations of girlhood and womanhood are received and interpreted by women from these countries residing in a Midwestern university town in the U.S. through interviews and discussions as the women reflect on what the messages from the artists mean in their own lives. Through discourse ethnography (Morley, 1999; Baéz, 2007; Durham, 2013), I analyze popular culture texts, including online songs, videos, lyrics, commentary and media coverage, created by and dedicated to MENA women rappers. These texts combined with women’s real life experiences make more accessible women’s voices from the region. Through their articulations of agency and liberation, the rappers display differential oppositional consciousnesses (Sandoval, 1991) in their personal and professional networks to imagine a better future for women in their societies. I argue that hip hop feminism as a theory and praxis can we applied to the MENA region to develop more varied, emancipatory epistemologies and perspectives on girlhood and womanhood.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Educational Policy Studies

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2018

Author dc:creator

• Williams, Angela Selena

Contributors dc:contributor

• McCarthy, Cameron
• Brown, Ruth N.
• Dhillon, Pradeep
• Trent, William

• Hip hop
• Women
• Middle East
• Popular culture
• Third world feminism
• Postcolonial
• Aesthetics

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2017 Angela Williams

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/99303

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/99303