Joseph Ewoodzie, author of the book Break Beats in the Bronx: Rediscovering Hip-Hop’s Early Years, will talk about his scholarship.

The book analyzes never-before-used archival material to provide a historical account of the making of hip hop. It focuses especially on a crucial but neglected period in hip hop’s early years, 1975-79. The study has implications for sociology of music and for cultural and historical sociology more broadly, as it centers on a case of social and symbolic boundary creation.

The Malcolm O Partin Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Sociology at Davidson College studies how marginalized populations in urban locales make sense of inequalities in their everyday lives. His work investigates how these populations interpret their social selves and order their relationships; how they create, maintain, and transform social and symbolic boundaries; and how boundaries constrain and enable their lives.