Hip hop shapes today's visual culture-from magazines, clothing and design to the art world itself. But what is it? Many of the elements of the culture can be traced back the early 1970s with graffiti on trains, and new forms of street dance, poetry and DJing coming out of the Bronx. An afrocentric street culture became a new language that spoke to the world. Beginning with the explosion in the '80s with artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Fab 5 Freddy and Keith Haring to the present with Kehinde Wiley, Renee Cox, Hank Willis Thomas, Sanford Biggers and Luis Gispert, hip hop broke race and class barriers in the visual arts on a global scale by fusing the pop sensibilities of Warhol with radical African-American aesthetics of abstract style, repetition and representation. The course will combine lectures and discussions, slides shows, exhibitions and readings, as well as writing assignments on topics covered in class.