Personal Position to Hip Hop Reflection Paper
5-7 pages double spaced.
Site your sources at the end of your paper in list form!
Creatively title your essay.
Creatively construct this essay.
Tell your personal story.
Write from an honest place of self reflection. Use journal exercises from the semester to
help if needed. Have conversations with family, friends, and classmates if that is helpful.
Midterm Reflection Essay Prompt:
Start by describing your personal cultural lens (ie your cultural heritage/where and how
you grew up). Describe how your personal lens has contributed to how you interpret
information about the Black body in motion. How were you influenced to interpret Hip
Hop dance and culture? Have your perspectives changed from what you have learned in
this course so far? Describe what factors have led to either shift or complicate
your perspective. While describing what as changed or become more complex for you,
give 2 examples of each of the following that have contributed to a change in perspective:
2 Black vernacular dance forms or styles (ie breaking, locking, popping, the social/viral
dances..)
2 Black practices (ways in which dance forms happen and evolve in a community
like the cypher or call and response or battling or line dances or party dances ect…)
2 historical events or contexts (like time period, place or vernacular environment,
or historical event that affected dance expression or vice versa).
2 ideas about representation that have resonated with you and helped lead you to
see things differently. (ways black people and black dance are portrayed
ie represented authentically, or misrepresented, or erased all together in films, tv
shows, social media, music videos
2 personal experiences with how you have experienced Hip Hop and Black dance
culture prior or during this course