The Stage Hip-Hop Feminism Built: A New Directions Essay

Intimacy, Authenticity and ‘Worlding’ in Beyoncé’s Star Project

“…Pop star Annie Lennox called it 'feminist lite' (Azzopardi, 2014), and feminist activist and scholar bell hooks described Beyoncé as 'anti-feminist' (Sieczkowski, 2014). Others, such as Durham et al (2013), were more positive and argue Beyoncé is a hip-hop feminist. For some critics, Beyoncé's engagement with black political activism is problematised by her status as mass commercial product.…”

A king named Nicki: strategic queerness and the black femmecee

“…Shange of gender, race, and power within and beyond hip hop (Rose 1994;Morgan 1999;Keyes 2002;Perry 2004;Pough 2004;Gaunt 2006;Peoples 2007;Pough et al 2007;Brown 2009;Love 2011;Brown and Kwakye 2012;Durham, Cooper, and Morris 2013). 5 However, women continue to be so underrepresented as mainstream hip hop artists (but certainly not as hip hop heads), that the introduction of every new female rapper is heralded as a sign of the rise of women in hip hop.…”

Developing Critical Hip Hop Feminist Literacies: Centrality and Subversion of Sexuality in the Lives of Black Girls

“…My orientation is influenced by Black respectability politics, which tend to suppress Black women's and girls' sexuality as a means of fighting sexism and racism. Strategies of Black respectability politics are both liberating and constraining in their deployment of honor, self-respect, piety, propriety, surveillance, and suppression of Black women and girls (Durham, Cooper, & Morris, 2013), thus presenting a conundrum. A more hip hop feminist-centered question would have been: "When you dance how do you feel?"…”