Biography
Amina Norman-Hawkins is an adjunct faculty member in the Music Department at Columbia College Chicago. She teaches ‘Hip-Hop: A Sonic History’ and ‘African American Music Survey’. She is a founding faculty member of Columbia College’s Hip-Hop Studies minor and co-founder of ‘ManiFresh’, a mini hip-hop festival within Columbia’s annual Manifest Urban Arts Festival.
Amina is a respected emcee, poet, and hip-hop practitioner. She is co-founder of Chicago Hip-Hop Heritage Month (officially recognized in July by a City Council resolution in 2003). She served as United States Cultural Envoy in 2010, touring 7 regions of the West African nation, Cote d’Ivoire. The experience was chronicled in her independently produced documentary Keep It Moving-Chicago to Cote d’Ivoire.
Amina has been on panels alongside activists, entertainers, and academics like Gloria Steinem, Dr. Carol Adams, Billy Wimsatt, MC Lyte, Fat Joe, DMC, Bakari Kitwana, Rhymefest, Joan Morgan, and many others. She has taken part in the “My” Philosophy: The Rise of Hip Hop Studies in the Academy Symposium, Unchained Vibes Africa conference, Preserving the Beats Symposium, Hip-Hop Theater Festival, Taking It To The Streets, Slum Fest & Paint Louis, Campus Progress National Student Conference, Antioch College Hip-Hop Convergence, and Remixing The Art Of Social Change.
Amina has spent 30+ years actively involved in hip-hop culture and community. She has guest lectured at Depaul, Northwestern, SAIC, Loyola, and Governors State University and is considered an internationally recognized voice in hip-hop.
Instructional Areas
Hip-Hop History, African American Music,
Creative Practice and Research Interests
Hip-Hop music and expression, African diasporic musical traditions and cultural practice, African American Genealogy
Degrees
A.A., English City Colleges of Chicago 1990