Akil Houston: A Hip Hop Connoisseur

Reading, Writing, and Rhythm
Scholar uses hiphop to illustrate social, historical, political issues

by Dwayne Steward
Features Writer
Perspectives
Thursday Oct 11, 2007

Akil Houston sits in his townhouse listening to Grand Master Flash, The Notorious B.I.G., Bessie Smith, and Big Mama Thornton. Flipping through his notes, he rocks his head to the beat and prepares the lecture for his Hiphop History, Culture, and Politics course.

The seminar, which Houston has been teaching as a visiting instructor of African American studies at Ohio University since 2003, examines hiphop as a manifestation of Africana visual and social culture. Hiphop is a cultural movement that developed in urban communities in the 1970s. Houston’s class uses hiphop to help bridge gaps of understanding in a historical, political, and social context.

“I incorporate hiphop in various ways, such as using rap music to understand theoretical concepts or to use students’ knowledge of hiphop culture to draw parallels to related issues in class,” Houston says. “For example, seeing the work of artists like Dead Prez as a sociological analysis of poverty may help students in understanding the work of W.E.B. DuBois in his study The Philadelphia Negro.”

Houston, a DJ since the age of nine, draws on his own experiences as a youth in the hiphop metropolis of Atlanta and in Denver. He says when he was younger, he learned about political issues from musicians such as Public Enemy and Ice Cube. “Hiphop just has this ability to change people,” he says.

Since then, Houston’s consuming passion for hiphop, which was sparked by an early obsession with his uncle’s band and mixed tape collection, has come to define much of his life. Now in academia, “hiphop in education” has become the focus of his research and teaching.

He is currently exploring strategies for using hiphop to challenge sexism and misogyny because “hiphop can be a tool in shifting the culture of sexism.” He explains that men must go beyond acknowledging the existence of sexism — they have to actively work to change it.

Houston contributes to the hiphop dialogue in print and in film. He is the author of Beyond Blackface: Africana Images in U.S. Media, which he uses in his black media course. The book’s second edition was published in January and was awarded “Best Book Edited by an African-American Writer” by the Urban Spectrum in Colorado. He is currently working on a documentary film, Hair-atage, which socially, politically, and historically evaluates styles of black hair and the social implication of beauty. The documentary is in pre-production. Houston also maintains the Web site www.hiphopscholar.org.

Hiphop is not only the focus of his dissertation, current research, and creative work, but also has become a tangible experience through his work with the university’s chapter of Hip Hop Congress, a national organization whose main goal is to use hiphop to inspire social and civil action through activities such as hosting break-dancing workshops at area elementary schools and inviting influential hiphop figures to speak.

In July, Ohio University’s chapter of Hip Hop Congress hosted the group’s 2007 national conference. Chapters from all over the country attended the event, which featured various workshops, performances, and networking opportunities for up-and-coming artists.

Houston believes hiphop, in its purest form, can be the newest vehicle to help educate America’s youth.

“If you simply look at popular culture and rap,” he says, “you miss all the potential and possibilities hiphop offers. Someone needs to fill that void and talk about not just the music, but the culture.”

Cion by Zakes Mda

Novel History
Acclaimed writer returns with multicultural tale of Ohio's past

by Dwayne Steward
Features Writer
Perspectives
Thursday Oct 11, 2007

Critically acclaimed author and Ohio University creative writing professor Zakes Mda has released a new work, Cion. It’s the seventh novel by Mda, whom The New York Times once compared to Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez for his ability to intertwine magical realism, social realism, and satire.

Cion, published through Picador in August, brings South African native Toloki to the small village of Kilvert, 14 miles outside of Athens, Ohio. The story borrows Toloki from Mda’s 2002 novel Ways of Dying, which became a best seller in South Africa and was critically praised by The Village Voice, Newsweek, and The New York Times. A film adaptation is in pre-production.

Cion draws on the history of Kilvert, which was once a stop on the Underground Railroad. Slaves settled in Athens County in lieu of heading north to Canada, marrying the Irish immigrants and Native Americans who lived in the region. They produced a “tri-racial” mixture, or new ethnic culture, Mda explains.

“I’ve always been interested in communities like that,” he says. “They’re very intriguing, and we have many of these communities in South Africa.”

The citizens of Kilvert tell their stories much differently than most; they weave their history into quilts. This is the catalyst Mda uses to shuttle between the present and past in his novel.

“Some of the women have quilts that date back to the Civil War,” Mda says. “Through the quilts, the novel looks at the community today and tells about its formation and where they’ve come from.”

Mda, a South African native, grew up during apartheid. Like many South African authors his career soared after the country’s liberation. His 2005 novel The Madonna of Excelsior, for example, was hailed by The New York Times as “a book of huge emotions, a book with the depth, if not breadth, of a classic” whose author “can seduce us through beautiful language and unfailing humor.”

The magical realism/humor mix that he is famous for is also employed in Cion. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, cion is defined as a detached twig containing buds from a woody plant, which has a double meaning in the novel, Mda says.

“Trees play a very important role in the novel,” Mda says. “Like a twig that is planted elsewhere and sprouts into a new tree are the people of Kilvert. Their ancestors were planted here and an entire new culture was born.”

Letters to the Editor

No Signature Required
Ban on anonymous editorial letters may hinder public discourse

by Dwayne Steward
Features Writer
Perspectives
Thursday Oct 11, 2007

Newspaper editor Bill Reader perused a letter to the editor that had just arrived from a concerned citizen in his community. He was hooked by the writer’s passion. The writer seemed to be knowledgeable about the topic and had spent a great amount of time formulating his opinion. The letter could have shed new light on a social issue and added to the public discourse.

Reader came to the letter’s end — by that time having already decided how and when he planned to print it — but the letter signed off with, “Sincerely, A Concerned Citizen.” Because Reader’s newspaper had a decades-old policy against publishing unsigned letters, instead of the op-ed page, the letter landed in the trash can.

Reader, who encountered that situation as the opinion page editor at the Centre Daily Times in Pennsylvania, cites research that says that may happen at 85 percent of newspapers in America due to the conundrum of anonymity associated with letter submissions. To be published, most submissions require a name. A long-held belief suggests that anonymous letters are sent out of malice or spite — a myth Reader is trying to dispel through his research — but one that has become the basis for the widely accepted policy requiring letter writers to be clearly identified.

Reader, now a faculty member at Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, and two colleagues conducted a national survey in 2004 and found that 35 percent of those who have never submitted a letter would if they did not have to include their name. Another of his research projects, published in 2005, argues that the signature-required policy is based on editors’ false ideas of responsibility and democratic speech, and has no real foundation in journalism history or goals to promote public discourse.

“Having a name doesn’t change the responsibility,” Reader says. “When I was an editor, I had people give me letters with their names that I definitely couldn’t use. But I also got many letters that were brilliant from people who didn’t sign their names, which I also couldn’t use.”

Though cowardice may or may not be the underlying factor as to why some people want to write anonymous letters to the editor, it shouldn’t overshadow the value of providing public venues for frank discussion.

“There are all kinds of things we use anonymity for to get at the truth: suicide help lines, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, confession practices in the Catholic Church, closed door government meetings. Why not newspapers?” he asks.

In an article published in 2005 in the Journal of Mass Media Ethics, Reader challenged
editors to be more open-minded and look at the issue from a practical and historical perspective.

“Editors who reject anonymous letters … perpetuate another myth: that letters submitted anonymously have little potential value and are submitted by people who do not deserve to participate in public discourse. That, in turn, violates another ethical principle, that journalists should ‘give voice to the voiceless,’” he writes.

In six research projects to date, Reader has investigated the use of pre-written letters
by advocacy groups, public attitudes toward controversial letters, and National Public Radio’s goals for its on-air “comments from listeners” segments. Reader now is analyzing confrontational rhetoric in letters printed during times of major social unrest,
such as the Civil Rights Movement, the Equal Rights Amendment, the Red Scare, and most recently the gay marriage debate. He hopes to soon write a book about these and several other issues related to letters to the editor.

Reader believes that the letters to the editor section of newspapers illustrates the fluctuations in America’s personality over time. The letters provide insight into the country’s “history, public discourse, and identity,” Reader says. “Amidst rapid and continuous change within newspapers today and over the past few years, letters to the editor have been America’s only constant. So much can be learned from them.”

New insulin pump

Intelligent Therapy
New software could provide guidance to Type 1 diabetics

by DWAYNE STEWARD
Features Writer
Perspectives
Monday Oct 08, 2007

New efforts by a computer scientist and an endocrinologist to design artificial intelligence software to manage insulin pump therapy could make life easier for patients with type 1 diabetes — and their doctors.

Dr. Frank Schwartz, an associate professor of endocrinology and director of the Appalachian Rural Health Institute’s Diabetes/Endocrine Center, is working with Cynthia Marling, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, to create the smarter pump therapy.

The technology (U.S. patent pending), used in conjunction with newer glucose monitoring systems, will help patients manage their glucose, or blood sugar, levels. It will monitor daily glucose trends, remember previous patterns, and examine daily lifestyle information to make suggestions to physicians about what patients can do to maintain good glucose control.

The most advanced insulin pumps currently available have glucose sensors that measure the glucose level continuously, which is a tremendous advance over previous technology. However, they do not adjust insulin levels automatically or make suggestions to help people with diabetes. The patient or physician must determine what adjustments in insulin pump doses should be made to correct any problems.

In the Ohio University study, five graduate research assistants shadowed Dr. Schwartz and Dr. Jay Shubrook, an Ohio University assistant professor in family medicine and trained diabetologist, as they identified and diagnosed problems with their patients.

Patients documented every detail of their treatment in an online database for six weeks. The physicians reviewed the data for each patient and then suggested an individualized course of action. The program is being taught to recognize common patterns of glucose problems (either too high or too low) as well as possible solutions for these problems.

“For example, if someone’s glucose levels are high at night, Dr. Schwartz may tell them they need to increase their pump basal rates of insulin infusion,” Marling says.

If the recommendation works, it is plugged into the computer program as a solution to a specific problem.

“We’ve identified 50 problems and solutions by working with 20 patients so far,” she says. “If we study 50 patients, we’d have a practical tool we could let patients use.”

In the future, this type of artificial intelligence will help patients identify problems and offer treatment suggestions without physician intervention, says Marling, who previously developed artificial intelligence software for physicians who treat patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

The project receives funding from the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine, the Russ College of Engineering and Technology, and Medtronic MiniMed, an insulin pump manufacturer, which provided $5,000 in equipment.

“We’re also in the process of registering the patent for this software and meeting with the insulin pump companies in hopes of forming a collaborative partnership with one of them,” Schwartz says.

This would not only bring in the private funding needed to continue the research, he says, but would put the technology in the hands of a national manufacturer that would help it reach more patients.