Introduction: Representin': Women, Hip-Hop, and Popular Music

janell hobson is an assistant professor of Women's Studies at the State University of New York at Albany. She is the author of Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture and is presently at work on a second book exploring race, gender, and digital media cultures. She has also begun work on an oral history concerning a ferryboat disaster between the Caribbean islands of St. Kitts and Nevis on August 1, 1970.

r. dianne bartlow is an assistant professor in the Department of Women's Studies at California State University, Northridge. She is a feminist scholar interested in representations of African-American women in popular music, culture, and media; early black feminist thought; and violence against women. Her published work includes “‘No Throw-away Woman’”: Maria W. Stewart as a Forerunner of Black Feminist Thought,” in Black Women's Intellectual Traditions: Speaking Their Minds, edited by Kristin Waters and Carol B. Conaway, and she is co-author of “Exploring New Frontiers: Women of Color in Academia,” in Women in Mass Communication (2nd ed.), edited by Pamela Creedon, in addition to several creative scholarship projects. Bartlow has also worked extensively in television production and is a multiple Emmy Award winning director/writer/producer. She is currently producing the documentary Legal Rape.