''Let's get free'': A critical ethnography of rap/hip hop, African American rhetoric, and critical social theory in college composition.

This dissertation is a critical ethnographic study of the ways four students experienced a first-year college writing course in which Rap/Hip Hop, African American rhetoric, and elements of critical social theory (Marxism, Critical Race Theory, and Black Feminism/Womanism) served as the primary "texts" for critical writing and interrogation. The research sought insight into the following questions: How can Hip Hop pedagogy in college composition engage students in a process of naming and changing unjust structures of racial oppression? In what ways does such instruction become meaningful in the lives of students beyond the confines of the composition classroom? Conducting extensive participant-observation with each informant both inside and outside of the composition classroom, I analyzed field notes and a variety of student-produced rhetorical artifacts for insight into the meaningfulness of major theoretical and rhetorical frameworks discussed in the course.;Findings indicated that students appropriated for themselves the critical engagements offered through Black rhetoric, culture, and critical social theory. Students indexed radical aspects of Rap/Hip Hop, Marxist theory, Black Feminism/Womanism, and Critical Race Theory within academic writing tasks. These concepts also facilitated students' critical democratic engagement against structures of racial, social, and economic injustice within their own social worlds. Such findings suggest that incorporating Rap/Hip Hop and critical social theory in college composition can facilitate students' ability to produce and resist discourses of power.