Rooted in the music and street culture of Black and Latin American urban youth amid the rise of the post-industrial crisis, Hip Hop culture has been a masculinist terrain since its inception. While women and female identifying persons have been among the culture’s creators, they have not always been adequately commemorated as part of Hip Hop’s grand narrative, nor have they been appropriately credited for their contributions and innovations. Working against tremendous odds to contest their ongoing marginalization and objectification, women in Hip Hop developed gender-specific strategies to carve out greater space, access, expression, and representation. Using a variety of archival texts and mediums, this course will explore Hip Hop’s origins and the politics of historical erasure; race, ethnicity and Blackness; gender, queerness, and intersectionality; misogyny, gendered violence, and exploitation; resistive practices, sounds and performances; negotiations with power, capitalism and industry; and the rise of Hip Hop Feminisms.