Talk by Dr. Dana Gorzelany-Mostak, "From Nope to Dope: How Barack Obama and Kamala Harris Found a Hip Hop Strategy"

In celebration of Black History Month, please join Black Studies and the department of Philosophy, Religion, and Liberal Studies for a talk by Dana Gorzelany-Mostak, "From Nope to Dope: How Barack Obama and Kamala Harris Found a Hip Hop Strategy." There will be a question and answer period following the talk, in which we encourage all to participate. 

The event will be held in the Arts and Sciences Auditorium (263) at 2pm on Monday, February 20. We welcome students, faculty, staff, as well as the public. Please inform and bring anyone who is interested. This will be our final event this month. Please contact Brooke Rudow, brooke.rudow@gcsu.edu, with any questions.

A description of Dr. Gorzelany-Mostak's talk is as follows: 

At a 2008 campaign event, presidential candidate Barack Obama dismissed the attacks of primary opponent Hillary Clinton by symbolically brushing dirt off his shoulder, a nod to hip hop mogul Jay Z’s popular track “Dirt Off Your Shoulder.” The casual gesture resonated with supporters and inspired countless memes and remixes across social media. Blogger Spencer Ackerman even referred to Obama’s brush as “the coolest subliminal cultural reference in the history of American politics.” While this unscripted act may affirm the candidate’s cool quotient, hip dad character, or man of the people persona, on a less explicit level, such moments of musical engagement operate as aural articulations of race and racial identity that tether the candidates to specific values, insights, histories, and embodied knowledge. If we are to consider the American presidency as both a symbol and an index of American masculinity, and by extension whiteness, how might music serve as a vehicle for performing identities both within and outside of this “standard,” and what value might these articulations offer candidates and the constituencies with which they wish to communicate?

Early in her 2019 presidential campaign, Kamala Harris notably engaged with music on several occasions, including a mixtape on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert where she opined on her favorite songs and artists, and an interview on The Breakfast Club where she professed her love for Tupac and Snoop Dogg. While both Obama and Harris engaged with hip hop on the campaign trail, Obama’s forays were met with applause, whereas Harris’s opened the floodgates to a flurry of criticism. This presentation analyzes the media discourses surrounding Harris’ engagement against the backdrop of recent scholarship on the intersection of politics, race, and gender. Ultimately, this analysis shows that while music engagement bestows cultural capital on male candidates, for female candidates, and especially Black women, musicality becomes yet another minefield of double standards.