Monday, December 17, 2012

A Malcolm X project on RapGenius, Pt. 1


A month or so ago, I began offering brief explanations of Malcolm X's "Message to the Grassroots" speech on the site RapGenius. So far, I've only provided about 12 or so short annotations. I'll ultimately offer more than 100 short entries on the speech, which I hope will assist in illuminating Malcolm's words.

Nearly every semester, I listen to Malcolm's speech with a couple of the classes that I teach.  We go over some of the big themes, but there's often the problem of not having enough time during the class periods to talk about many of the details and nuances of Malcolm's use of distinct words and phrasings. This project of annotating the speech on RapGenius will help me address that problem by providing an online resource that explains several details of Malcolm's "Message."   

Completing the annotations will take me a little time, but the plan is for me to complete much of the work prior to our coverage of Malcolm's speech during the spring semester.  I'm looking forward to working through the speech and trying to figure out what words, phrases, and sentences might be usefully explained for students. 

I've visited RapGenius for over a year now, but this annotation project will be the first time that I've actually contributed to the site. Along the way, I'll produce a few entries highlighting what I'm learning and experiencing as I decode and annotate this significant speech.

Related:  
A Notebook on RapGenius

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