Reading List

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  Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life: Hip-Hop Pedagogy and the Politics of Identity

  by Marc Lamont Hill

  For over a decade, educators have looked to capitalize on the appeal of hip-hop culture, sampling its language, techniques, and styles as a way of reaching out to students. But beyond a fashionable hipness, what does hip-hop have to offer our schools? In this revelatory new book, Marc Lamont Hill shows how a serious engagement with hip-hop culture can affect classroom life in extraordinary ways. Buy now

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  Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas’s Illmatic

  by Michael Eric Dyson and Sohail Daulatzai

  Product Description

  From the moment then nineteen-year-old Nasir “Nas” Jones began recording tracks for his debut album the hip-hop world was forever changed… In Born to Use Mics, Michael Eric Dyson and Sohail Daulatzai have brought together the brightest minds to reflect upon and engage one of the most incisive sets of songs ever laid down on wax. Buy now

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  Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies

  by Elizabeth McHenry

  Product Description

  Forgotten Readers expands our definition of literacy and urges us to think of literature as broadly as it was conceived of in the nineteenth century. Elizabeth McHenry delves into archival sources, including the records of past literary societies and the unpublished writings of their members… Buy now

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  Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration

  by Devah Pager

  Product Description

  The product of an innovative field experiment, Marked gives us our first real glimpse into the tremendous difficulties facing ex-offenders in the job market. Devah Pager matched up pairs of young men, randomly assigned them criminal records, then sent them on hundreds of real job searches throughout the city of Milwaukee… Buy now

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  Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime

  by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

  Product Description

  In Game Change, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, two of the country’s leading political reporters, use their unrivaled access to pull back the curtain on the Obama, Clinton, McCain, and Palin campaigns. Buy now

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  Prison Literature in America: The Victim as Criminal and Artist

  by H. Bruce Franklin

  Product Description

  Prison Literature in America–the first full-length study of American prison literature–has become a landmark work in American cultural history, Marxist theory, and the relations between crime and art. This greatly expanded third edition contains much new material, especially on current prison literature, and the Annotated Bibliography of Published Works by American Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners has doubled since the 1978 edition. Buy now

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  Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics

  by Jodi Dean

  Product Description

  Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies is an impassioned call for the realization of a progressive left politics in the United States. Through an assessment of the ideologies underlying contemporary political culture, Jodi Dean takes the left to task for its capitulations to conservatives… Buy now

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  The Moral Underground: How Ordinary Americans Subvert an Unfair Economy

  by Lisa Dodson

  Review by Publishers Weekly

  In this fascinating exploration of economic civil disobedience, Dodson (Don’t Call Us Out by Name) introduces readers to teachers, supervisors, health-care professionals and managers who bend the rules—and even break the law—to support those in need… Buy now

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  Liberalization’s Children: Gender, Youth, and Consumer Citizenship in Globalizing India

  by Ritty Lukose

  Product Description

  Liberalization’s Children explores how youth and gender have become crucial sites for a contested cultural politics of globalization in India. Popular discourses draw a contrast between “midnight’s children,” who were rooted in post-independence Nehruvian developmentalism… Buy now

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  From the Inside Out: Letters to Young Men and Other Writings

  by Student Press Initiative and Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Product Description

  Inspired by the desire to reach out to young men who may be in danger of incarceration themselves, the men offer, in the first section of the book, heartfelt letters written to their younger selves, their sons, their nephews, and associates still on the street…. Buy now