PULLMAN, Wash. — University of Southern California professor Todd Boyd will discuss contemporary America on Feb. 9 as part of the Washington State University Comparative Ethnic Studies’ Spring Speaker series.
The lecture will begin at 7 p.m. in the Samuel H. Smith Center for Undergraduate Education, Room 202. The event is free and open to the public.
Boyd, who has been hailed as the “hip-hop professor,” is an internationally recognized expert on film, sports and popular culture. His cutting-edge book, “Young Black Rich and Famous: The Rise of the NBA, the Hip Hop Invasion and the Transformation of American Culture,” was published in 2003.
David Leonard, a comparative American cultures faculty member, said Boyd is bound to bring the heat and stir any audience with his style and willingness to challenge conventional academic norms.
“Boyd will bring significant insight into not only the nature of today’s NBA, but use basketball as a space of understanding larger social issues surrounding race, hip hop and black males,” he said. “His scholarship challenges America to examine its relationship with black cultural icons, questioning the way in which blackness is conceived within the white imagination.”
Boyd received a doctorate from the University of Iowa and teaches at the USC School of Cinema-Television.
