This ethnographic study contributes to the growing body of literature in cultural studies and critical pedagogy by showing how knowledge, power, and student interpretations are negotiated and renegotiated as hip-hop culture becomes a part of the official curriculum in “Hip-Hop Lit,” a hip-hop centered English literature class that I co-taught at “Howard High School.” In this study, I highlight the complex relationships that the students and teachers in Hip-Hop Lit forged with the texts and each other through various forms of identity work and the intersections of in-school and out-of-school pedagogy. Further, I demonstrate how these relationships facilitated the reconfigured roles of student, teacher, and researcher within the classroom
