KU News Release

‘Check It While I Wreck It’ author, hip-hop feminist to speak Nov. 9 at KU

Gwendolyn Pough

LAWRENCE — Hip-hop feminist, novelist and women’s studies scholar Gwendolyn D. Pough of Syracuse University will give a lecture at the University of Kansas.

The event takes place at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 9, at the Big 12 Room in the Kansas Union.

Her lecture, “It’s My Beat: Women, Hip-Hop and a Feminist Agenda,” is sponsored by the KU Department of English and is free and open to the public.

Pough is an associate professor of women’s studies, writing and rhetoric at Syracuse. She is the author of Check It While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip-Hop Culture and the Public Sphere as well as numerous articles and essays. Under the pen name Gwyneth Bolton she writes fiction and has published her first three novels this year.

“Hip-hop gave me a culture and a language. Memorizing the lyrics of my favorite songs and writing my own rhymes introduced me to literacy I could feel,” Pough has said.

Her current projects include co-editing Home Girls Make Some Noise: Hip-Hop Anthology, a forthcoming collection of essays, art, poetry and narratives by women trying to navigate their identities as feminists involved with hip-hop culture. Pough is also researching the cultural and political impact of contemporary African-American women’s book clubs.

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