I really like hip-hop. A few months ago, as I was finishing my two years of Library School, I was taking a seminar called “Analysis of Scholarly Domains.” We were contemplating the structure of knowledge in University settings, and I was spending a lot of time thinking about which voices get included in the Academy, which become excluded, and why that happens. We’re talking nights spent awake until 2 and 3 a.m., reading Michel Foucault and banging my head against the desk until finally having the “a-ha” moment — so it’s that sort of “a lot of time thinking”! The result of all that thinking was a twenty page term paper called “Learning Between Borders,” a personal narrative of my own journey through the Academy, including my love of both MLA and hip-hop, and why I think they go smashingly together.
Rachel Smalter Hall 