CFP: American Regional Hip Hop (6/15/07; collection)
Represent Where I'm From: The Greenwood Guide to American Regional Hip Hop
(Proposals due January 30, 2007. Essays due June 15, 2007)
Call for Contributors: I am seeking contributors for Represent Where I'm
From: The Greenwood Guide to American Regional Hip Hop, a two-volume
reference set under contract with Greenwood Press. This collection will
consist of 10,000-word essays on the most important regional hip hop
scenes in the US. Some of the regions available to contributors include:
1. Bronx
2. Queens
3. Brooklyn
4. Staten Island
5. Manhattan
6. Philadelphia
7. New Jersey (Newark, Trenton, Camden, etc)
8. Los Angeles
9. Compton
10. Oakland
11. San Francisco
12. Miami
13. Houston
14. Atlanta
15. Memphis
16. The Northwest
17. Chicago (and Gary, IN)
18. Ohio: Cincinnati and Columbus
19. Boston (and Providence, RI)
20. St Louis
21. New Orleans
22. Detroit
23. Southern Appalachia (Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, etc)
24. Minneapolis and Milwaukee
In hip hop, where an artist comes from means everything. From Brooklyn,
New York to Memphis, Tennessee, hip hop artists devote song lyrics to
their cities, neighborhoods, area codes, and street corners. Musically,
regions often carry distinctive styles of production that become known as
Houston's Screwed and Chopped sound or the Miami Bass Sound. Hip hop
artists represent where they're from in the way they talk in regional
accents and dialects, the way they dress, and the setting of the stories
they tell in their lyrics. This collection will profile regional hip hop
scenes in the US to show how regional slang, sounds, and styles are
developed, and how artists use those sounds and styles to represent their
hometowns.
Represent Where I'm From traces hip hop's development from 1970s block
parties in the South Bronx to a worldwide phenomenon with unique musical
styles throughout several regions in the United States. The collection
will address the importance of region to hip hop identity, from the early
rap battles between Queens' Juice Crew and the Bronx's Boogie Down
Productions, to the well-publicized East Coast vs. West Coast beefs
between Bad Boy Records and Death Row Records. This collection will
showcase the hip hop artists who create styles all their own by developing
slang, fashion style, and musical and lyrical structures meant to
represent the place they call home.
About the Editor: Dr. Mickey Hess is Assistant Professor of English at
Rider University, the editor of Greenwood Press' Icons of Hip hop, and the
author of Hustlin and Grindin: Hip Hop and the American Dream (forthcoming
from Praeger). His scholarship on hip hop music has been published in
Critical Studies in Media Communication, Mosaic: A Journal for the
Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, and Popular Music and Society.
Submitting a Proposal:
Each author will agree to write a 10,000-word essay on one region, plus 5
"Landmarks," which are 300-500 word sidebars that highlight geographical
landmarks mentioned in lyrics, as well as slang terms, fashion items,
production styles, area codes, street corners, restaurants, interstate
roads, local radio stations, etc, that are important to the region's
music.
By January 30, 2007, submit an outline of your proposed essay, a CV, and a
writing sample as Microsoft Word Documents to Mickey Hess at
regionalhiphop_at_gmail.com. Your outline should include the hip hop artists
and regional features you plan to cover, as well as a list of the 5
landmarks that will serve as sidebars for your essay.
Authors invited to submit completed essays will be asked to meet a June
15, 2007 due date.
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Received on Sat Jan 06 2007 - 18:55:49 EST