Kendrick Lamar and the Making of Black Meaning

Christopher M. Driscoll is Assistant Professor of Religion, Africana, and American Studies at Lehigh University. Driscoll is also cofounder and former chair of the Critical Approaches to Hip Hop and Religion group at the American Academy of Religion. Much of his work attends to hip hop culture, including editing a 2011 special issue of the Bulletin for the Study of Religion on the topic, he is coauthor of Breaking Bread, Breaking Beats: Churches and Hip Hop - A Guide to Key Issues (Fortress, 2014), and more. Driscoll is also author of White Lies: Race & Uncertainty in the Twilight of American Religion (Routledge, 2015), and coauthor (with Monica R. Miller) of Method as Identity: Manufacturing Distance in the Academic Study of Religion (Lexington, 2018).Monica R. Miller is Associate Professor of Religion, Africana Studies, and Director of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Lehigh University, USA. Miller is the author of Religion and Hip Hop (Routledge, 2012), The Hip Hop and Religion Reader, coedited with Anthony B. Pinn (Routledge, 2014), Religion in Hip Hop: Mapping the New Terrain in the US, coedited with Anthony B. Pinn and Bernard Bun B Freeman (Bloomsbury, 2015), Claiming Identity in the Study of Religion: Social and Rhetorical Techniques Examined ed. (Equinox, 2016), and Humanism in a Non-Humanist World ed. (Palgrave Macmillan) among other books, numerous essays, and book chapters on the topic. Miller is cofounder and current cochair of the Critical Approaches to hip hop and Religion group at the American Academy of Religion and has presented nationally on the topic over the past ten years. Anthony B. Pinn is Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and Professor of Religious Studies at Rice University. He is also the founding Director of Rice's Certer for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning. Pinn is also the Director of Research for the Institute for Humanist Studies (Washington, DC). In addition to courses on African American religious thought, liberation theologies, and religious aesthetics, Pinn co-teaches with Bernard Bun B Freeman a popular course on religion and hip hop culture. The course received media coverage from a variety of outlets including MTV. He is the author/editor of over 30 books, including Noise and Spirit: Rap Music's Religious and Spiritual Sensibilities (NYU Press, 2003); The Religion and Hip Hop Reader, coedited with Monica R. Miller (Routledge, 2014); and Religion in Hip Hop: Mapping the New Terrain in the US, coedited with Monica R. Miller and Bernard Bun B Freeman (Bloomsbury, 2015).