A.D. Carson is an award-winning performance artist and educator from Decatur, Illinois. His work focuses on race, literature, history, rhetorics & performance. He received a Ph.D. in Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design at Clemson University. His album, i used to love to dream, the first-ever rap album peer-reviewed for publication with an academic press, was released with University of Michigan Press in 2020. This work extends from his doctoral dissertation, Owning My Masters: The Rhetorics of Rhymes & Revolutions, a rap album that is the primary feature of a digital archive at phd.aydeethegreat.com. Owning My Masters was internationally heralded and was also recognized by Clemson’s Graduate Student Government as the 2017 Outstanding Dissertation.
CNN News18 - Hip-hop Professor Who Rapped His Dissertation Has Now Released First Ever Peer-reviewed Album
CNN News18 (India) on ``i used to love to dream`` and ``Owning My Masters.``: A.D. Carson, now a professor of hip-hop with University of Virginia has previously presented his PhD in the form of a 34-track rap album, with topics including justice, economics, language, identity.
LEARN MORENPR - 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.
LISTENA.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 MOREi used to love to dream: A.D. Carson discusses his mixtap/e/ssay with J. Griffith Rollefson
A.D. Carson’s “i used to love to dream” represents a new medium for hip hop scholarship — the music itself. Carson discusses his “mixtap/e/ssay,” recently released in a free open access format on Fulcrum, with Critical Excess author J. Griffith Rollefson.
LEARN MORESee 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 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 MOREMixtap/e/ssay: Sleepwalking 2
A year into his new role at the University of Virginia as Professor of Hip-Hop, A.D. Carson released “Sleepwalking 2.” Carson garnered national attention the previous May when he earned his PhD from Clemson University by submitting his dissertation, “Owning My Masters: The Rhetorics of Rhymes and Revolutions,” in the form of a rap album. Upon accepting the unique professorship in the music department at UVA and moving to Charlottesville, VA, Carson released “Sleepwalking, Vol. 1: A Mixtape” in the wake of the events of last summer’s chaos in the college town. That project opens with Carson performing “Good Mourning, America” in Charlottesville’s McGuffey Park at a counter-protest the morning of the “Unite the Right” rally.
KNOWLEDGE CENTER
Dr. Carson was a 2016 recipient of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Award for Excellence in Service at Clemson University for his work 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 the poem featured on his dissertation album. He is also the author of a novel, COLD, which hybridizes poetry, rap lyrics, and prose. Dr. Carson’s work has been featured by Complex, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Forbes, The Guardian, Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, NPR’s All Things Considered, OkayPlayer, Quiddity International Literary Journal and Public-Radio Program, Time, USA Today, and XXL among others. His projects are available to stream/download free from aydeethegreat.com. Dr. Carson is currently assistant professor of Hip-Hop & the Global South at the University of Virginia.
SEE 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.”
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)