The reach of late gangster-rapper Tupac Shakur is making its way from the airwaves and silver screen to the classroom at the University of Washington.
His life and influences are the subject of “The Textual Appeal of Tupac Shakur,” a UW class this fall created by teaching assistant Georgia Roberts, a third-year graduate student.
Roberts got the idea for a course dedicated to Shakur while teaching a class on the history of hip-hop.
The UW is not the first college with a class dedicated to Shakur — classes on the rapper have been offered at the University of California Berkeley and Harvard — but it is the first to relate Shakur’s work to literature.
“I wanted to show students there is something to be gained from taking a closer look at why so many people consume a figure like Tupac and why he is important,” Roberts said.
Shakur, raised by his mother, Afeni, a one-time Black Panther activist, wrote songs about life on the street, gang violence and teenage pregnancy. He died at the age of 25 after a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas in 1996 — an attack believed to be a result of an East Coast/West Coast hip-hop feud that later claimed the life of friend-turned-rival Notorious B.I.G.
Shakur, also known as “2Pac,” released four albums and starred in three films and has had several CDs and films released posthumously, including the recent documentary biopic, “Tupac Resurrection.”
The class, offered through the comparative history of ideas (CHID) program, explores the literary and historical influences present in the work of the rapper.
“We’ve always been an experimental program and one of the ways we keep our curriculum bubbling is by giving the opportunity to take and teach experimental courses,” said John Toews, director of the CHID program.
The course quickly became popular and Roberts received more than 150 e-mails requesting registration codes for the 20 spots in the class, a two-credit “focus group” that meets once a week for two hours.
Students read texts such as Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War,” Machiavelli’s “The Prince,” Christopher Marlowe’s “Dr. Faustus” and various selections from Shakespeare and the Bible in an effort to better understand Shakur’s work and the influence such sources had on him.
The material, read alongside Shakur’s lyrics and poems, acts as a catalyst for classroom discussions about race, gender and class within Shakur’s work and the continuing relevance of the historic works.
Shakur’s career was filled with controversy. He was heavily criticized by politicians and black leaders for his lyrics. But Shakur also wrote songs expressing his adoration of his mother and the hardships faced by women in the inner city. This duality within his personality has been a popular topic in the classroom.
“Women in the class, myself included, were particularly drawn to his being able to say these things that appear to be demeaning to women but also have a more positive message,” Roberts said.
The instructor said she is better able to relate to her students because of her interest in hip-hop and her knowledge of the music.
“Hip-hop is a language I can share with my students because it is something I grew up with,” Roberts said. “To be able to dialogue with my students about issues like race, class and gender through the language of hip-hop has been an amazing and powerful experience.”
She uses Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and Mumia Abu Jamal’s “Live From Death Row” to teach her class about revolutionary figures within a stabilized society, something Shakur was considered to be by many before and after his death.
“I bring a CD player to class, and during that uncomfortable moment when listening to music, some students are bobbing their heads to the music while others are rapidly writing down notes,” Roberts said. “It’s fun to see that interaction with the material.”
However, the class is more than just listening to music and talking about gangster rap. Students are expected to read more than 100 pages a week and participate in discussions about the significance of the material and how it relates to Shakur’s work.
“Students are not just listening to his music and internalizing it. Students are listening to his music and listening to the messages that are coming across,” Roberts said.
Currently, the course is examining Shakur as a black Jesus figure, a theory popularized by Michael Eric Dyson, a professor of religious studies at DePaul University in Chicago and author of the book “Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur,” which Roberts uses in the class.
Along with Dyson’s theory, the class is discussing the religious themes present in Shakur’s lyrics and the recent film “Tupac Resurrection.”
Roberts said some of her students have told her the messages in Shakur’s music were motivating factors in their decision to attend college. She said her own decision to pursue higher education also was influenced by the rapper’s music.
“Listening to hip-hop when I was younger was always a motivation to gain access to education and to be able to have these larger debates that are going on within society,” Roberts said.
Shakur’s interest in literature influenced Roberts to read the texts being used in the classroom when she was a teenager, and to explore the social issues he wrote about.
“I would have never read ‘Live From Death Row’ if he hadn’t shouted out Mumia Abu Jamal in his lyrics, and I don’t think I would have looked into Reaganomics or the prison-industrial complex and those sorts of issues if I hadn’t been listening to Tupac,” she said.
Her students are excited to learn about the messages in Shakur’s music and the influences behind the rapper’s lyrics.
“Finally we are seeing someone, not from the 1600s or 1800s, but from now, six years ago, being studied. That’s pretty amazing,” said Keane Sweet, a student in the class.
“The fun of Tupac is that he has songs that spoke to everything,” Sweet said. “Now I’ll listen to some songs and say: ‘I can jive with that.’ And I will listen to other songs and say, ‘Wow, that had more significance, either philosophically or culturally.’ He really had an impact.”
The CHID program uses focus groups, where students study and discuss a topic in which they are interested, as a sort of academic tryout. Roberts’ class has been such a success with students that it will be offered again in March as a full, five-credit course.
Next for a pop culture focus group: “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
The class, called “Buffy as Archetype: Rethinking Human Nature Within the Buffyverse,” will relate the TV show to Sigmund Freud, Karl Jung and concepts of myth in popular culture.
