Sept. 12 lecture in Bozeman looks at use of rap music in criminal trials
 
 

BOZEMAN -- A free public lecture exploring the use of rap lyrics as evidence in criminal trials will be at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 12, in the Procrastinator Theater in the Strand Union Building at Montana State University.
 
Charis Kubrin, professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine, will lecture about "Rap on Trial."
 
Kubrin says that rap music lyrics are being introduced as evidence of a defendant's guilt in criminal proceedings across the U.S. In this talk, she will draw attention to the practice of what she calls "rap on trial."
 
Kubrin is co-author or co-editor of five books and has published dozens of journal articles, many of which focus on the intersection of music, culture and social identity, particularly as it applies to hip-hop and minority youth in disadvantaged communities. She is a frequent media contributor whose writing has been featured in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Forbes and CNN. She is co-author of two amicus briefs on rap music that were filed with the U.S. Supreme Court and has served as an expert witness and consultant in multiple criminal cases involving rap music as evidence of alleged underlying criminal activity.

Kubrin gave a TEDx talk, "The Threatening Nature of…Rap Music," on the use of rap lyrics as evidence in criminal trials. In 2005, she received the American Society of Criminology's Ruth Shonle Cavan Young Scholar Award and in 2014 she received The Coramae Richey Mann Award from the American Society of Criminology's Division on People of Color and Crime in recognition of her outstanding contributions to scholarship on race, crime and justice.
 
Kubrin's lecture is sponsored by the MSU Department of Sociology and Anthropology, and is presented by theCollege of Letters and Science's Distinguished Speakers Series. The series, which began in the spring of 2011, brings distinguished scholars to MSU to give a public talk and to meet with faculty and students in order to enrich the intellectual life on campus and to enhance research connections.
 
For more information about this and other Distinguished Speakers Series lectures at Montana State University, visit www.montana.edu/lettersandscience/speakers/ or call 994-4288.