Dr. Bettina L. Love to present “GET FREE: Creativity, Hip Hop Civics Ed, Intersectionality & Joy” Monday, Oct. 23

October 10, 2017

Award-winning author and esteemed hip-hop educational researcher Bettina L. Love, Ph.D., will speak on campus Monday, Oct. 23, at 6 p.m. in the Russell Union Ballroom.

Hosted by the Multicultural Student Center, Student Support Services and the Gay-Straight Alliance, “A Night with Dr. Love” will present “GET FREE: Creativity, Hip-Hop Civics Ed, Intersectionality, & Joy.”

Love is an associate professor of educational theory and practice at the University of Georgia. She is the founder of “Real Talk: Hip-Hop Education for Social Justice,” an after school initiative aimed at teaching elementary students the history and elements of hip-hop for social justice through project-based learning.

Her research focuses on the ways in which urban youth negotiate hip-hop music and culture to form social, cultural and political identities to create new and sustaining ways of thinking about urban education and intersectional social justice. Her research also focuses on how teachers and schools can work with parents and communities to build communal, civically engaged, anti-racist, anti-homophobic and anti-sexist educational, equitable classrooms.

Love is a sought-after public speaker on a range of topics including: hip-hop education, black girlhood, queer youth, hip-hop feminism, art-based education to foster youth civic engagement, and issues of diversity. In 2014, she was invited to the White House Research Conference on Girls to discuss her work focused on the lives of black girls. In addition, she is the inaugural recipient of the Michael F. Adams award (2014) from the University of Georgia. She has also provided commentary for various news outlets including NPR, The Guardian, and the Atlanta Journal Constitution. For her work in the field, in 2016, Love was named the Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African-American Research at Harvard University.

Love is one of the founding board members of The Kindezi School, an innovative school focused on small classrooms and art-based education. She is the author of the book Hip Hop’s Li’l Sistas Speak: Negotiating Hip Hop Identities and Politics in the New South. Her work has appeared in numerous books and journals, including the English Journal, Urban Education, The Urban Review, and Journal of LGBT Youth. In 2017, Love edited a special issue of the Journal of Lesbian Studies focused on the identities, gender performances, and pedagogical practices of black and brown lesbian educators. She is currently working on her second book, We Want to Do More Than Survive: A Pedagogy of Mattering.

This event is funded by the Campus Life Enrichment Committee (CLEC) grant and is free and open to the public.

Georgia Southern University, a public Carnegie Doctoral/Research University founded in 1906, offers 118 degree programs serving 20,673 students. Through eight colleges, the University offers bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs built on more than a century of academic achievement. Georgia Southern is recognized for its student-centered and hands-on approach to education. Visit GeorgiaSouthern.edu.