two words, tenure track, two professors, coming back?

oh snap. that was clever.

but i digress. word on the street is that Marcyliena Morgan, the professor who was denied tenure a few years ago and left with husband Lawrence Bobo for Stanford, has been offered a tenured position here. Morgan and Bobo's departure was a pretty big blow for the department, and coming shortly after the departures of Cornel West and K. Anthony Appiah, and shortly before the departure of Michael Dawson, i for one was beginning to lose all hope. i swear. not a day goes by when i don't kick myself for not taking Dawson's class freshman year. if only i had known.

but i digress again. the point is that many of us seniors had to live through what i'd call the dark ages of Harvard as far as af-am goes. West left right before we got here, and many of us took Af-Am 10 when it was in it's abandoned child phase, before it got picked up this year by Skip Gates and Evelyn Higginbotham (i audited it even though i had already taken it, so i wouldn't feel robbed). But now i'm feeling hopeful again. not for myself, it's too late for me. but for all the young'uns out there. The Af-Am department has made a tremendous comeback on a number of fronts, and this news about Morgan and Bobo is the icing on the cake.

i'll just take a moment to drool over how much i would have loved to take a class with Morgan. she is the founder of the hiphop archive, author of Language, Discourse and Power in African American Culture, and is currently working on a book entitled The Real Hiphop - Battling for Knowledge, Power, and Respect in the Underground . damn. like seriously. she studies discourse and power within hip-hop, race, class, and gender, identity, media representations... *wistful sigh*

anyways, i guess that's all. i hope they come back. it sort of amazes me that there aren't more people studying hip-hop in academia today. i could write like, 10 books on it and i haven't even done any research. its fascinating.

so i'll leave you with this parting thought: if you didn't catch the reference in the title of this post, that's cool because now you have a great song to listen to. and if you did catch the reference, my question for you is have you seen the VIDEO? i think this is one of the more clever video's i've seen in a while. i have a special place in my heart for kanye. :-)