Take a Kanye West Class at Washington University

Another semester, another class that makes us wish we were still in college.

January 19, 2017

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If you've ever wanted to become a scholar on the complexities of Kanye West's career and controversies, you may want to consider enrolling at Washington University in St. Louis. This semester, Dr. Jeffrey McCune is offering a course called "The Politics of Kanye West: Black Genius and Sonic Aesthetics" as part of the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department.

"I always wanted to teach a course looking at black genius and the impossibility of black genius for the American public," McCune told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "We’re always thought of as maybe being articulate or smart but not really genius."

The course isn't just about Kanye West, though. The professor sees it as “good way to get students to connect issues of politics, race, gender, sexuality and culture," he told the Post-Dispatch.

The class description is as follows:

As a hip-hop artist Kanye West has had unprecedented impact on the sonic force of music, fashion, politics, and videography. Coupling his controversial moments, with his corpus of musical texts with special focus on sonic production, this course illuminates "Mr. West" as a case study for interrogating the interplay between fame, gender, sexuality, and race. Mostly, we explore how radicalized ways of doing iconography, complex ways of seeing, creates a distorted or reductive frame through which we see the black and famous. Nonetheless, the course oscillates with entertaining these nuances, while being entertained by the decade-long catalogue of music and visual imagery. Together, we extract the "Politics of Mr. West" in his music and life, while also illuminating the importance of a politics of genius-making in the larger arc of black pop culture tradition.

McCune readily acknowledges Kanye's flaws and controversies.

"Many people spend a lot of time talking about Kanye as a controversial and somewhat hot-headed figure," he told the Post-Dispatch. "They’re very interested in Kanye West as a source of personality. Throughout his career, he has always interested me — his sense of black excellence, his belief that we have within us the capacity for greatness. I know for Kanye that has translated as narcissism and arrogance."

Some of West's recent controversies include that whole feud with Taylor Swift, saying he did not vote in the presidential election but he would have voted for Donald Trump, and subsequently meeting with Trump.

If you missed the boat on registering for the course, have no fear: McCune is currently working on a book on Kanye, and is planning a series of public lectures on the topic at Washington University on Feb. 15, March 8 and April 12. Wonder if Kanye will enroll considering he's technically a college dropout...