A.D. Carson is a performance artist and educator from Decatur, Illinois. He received a Ph.D. in Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design at Clemson University doing work that focuses on race, literature, history, and rhetorical performances. A 2016 recipient of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Award for Excellence in Service at Clemson, Carson worked with students, staff, faculty, and community members to raise awareness of historic, entrenched racism at the university through his See the Stripes campaign, which takes its name from his 2014 poem. His dissertation, “Owning My Masters: The Rhetorics of Rhymes & Revolutions,” is a digital archive that features a 34 track rap album and was recognized by the Graduate Student Government as the 2017 Outstanding Dissertation.
NPR - A.D. Carson Is UVa's New Hip-Hop Professor
Carson's doctoral dissertation, a 34-track rap album, went viral. This fall, he'll teach hip-hop history and composition in the hope of giving his students tools to engage in difficult conversations.
LISTENSee The Stripes `{`Clemson University`}`: A Poem by A.D. Carson
The site of “the most exciting 25 seconds in college football” was made possible by profits from the most shameful centuries in America’s history, but come to the campus of Clemson University, and you’d hardly be able to tell it from looking around.
LEARN MOREA.D. Carson: Owning My Masters Dissertation Intro
My dissertation is a rap album. Just trying to do dope sh*t. That's all. Figured I'd share what I've been doing with y'all.
LEARN MORERadio New Zealand - A.D. Carson Interview
Radio New Zealand (RNZ) provides listeners with exciting and independent radio programmes in accordance with the Radio New Zealand Charter. Dr. Carson joins Melody Thomas to talk race relations, the politics of language, and the influence of hip-hop.
LEARN MORESeeing the Stripes: An Interview
Reporter Ellen Meny sits down with Dr. Rhondda Thomas and A.D. Carson to discuss Dr. Thomas's research ``Slaves of the State: Convict Labor and Clemson Land and Legacy``, as well as A.D.'s See the Stripes initiative.
LEARN MOREA.D. Carson: What Is Justice vs What Just Is
What does justice sound like? History tells us it’s chants and songs, coded language meant to inspire change, boots on streets and sidewalks, arms locked against police dogs, water hoses, cops in riot gear fanning flames of fires ignited hundreds of years previous..
LEARN MORESEE THE STRIPES
“I attend Clemson University, which was founded on on lands donated by Thomas Green Clemson to the state of South Carolina. The land was previously the Fort Hill Plantation, and the main residence is open seven days a week, honoring Clemson’s willed wish that it “shall always be open for the inspection of visitors.” Of course, I did not know there would be a plantation house operating as a museum at the university when I’d accepted the offer to attend, but more troubling, I thought, was the way history is told through communications published by and created for the university, and the strange relationship between those versions of history and the dedication to the athletics programs, particularly football, and the university’s “Solid Orange” campaign. It seemed only logical to help create a better representation of those stories untold, from a historical perspective, and of the students who don’t feel that “Solid Orange” properly represents the diversity that exists presently at Clemson with a program to help Clemson, the surrounding communities and the world “See The Stripes.”
KNOWLEDGE CENTER
Dr. Carson is an award-winning artist with essays, music, and poetry published at a variety of diverse venues such as The Guardian, Quiddity International Literary Journal and Public-Radio Program, and Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, among others. His essay “Trimalchio from Chicago: Flashing Lights and the Great Kanye in West Egg” appears in The Cultural Impact of Kanye West (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), and “Oedipus—Not So Complex: A Blueprint for Literary Education” is in Jay-Z: Essays on Hip Hop’s Philosopher King (McFarland & Co., 2011). Carson has written a novel, COLD, which hybridizes poetry, rap lyrics, and prose, and The City: [un]poems, thoughts, rhymes & miscellany, a collection of poems, short stories, and essays.
DELVE DEEPER
“For the mothers, the daughters/the sisters who don’t get attention/but often are victims/so they suffer in silence/from all kinds of violence/and try as they might we don’t listen.”
—A.D. Carson
A.R.T. (ALREADY READ THAT)