New book and online class launch celebration Feb. 19 at Alley Kat

MEDIA ADVISORY

David Ruth
713-348-6327
david@rice.edu

New book and online class launch celebration Feb. 19 at Alley Kat

HOUSTON – (Feb. 16, 2015) – Houston’s hip-hop community will host the launch of a new book from Rice University’s Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning’s (CERCL) at 7 p.m. Feb. 19 at Houston’s Alley Kat, 3718 Main St. The book, “Break Bread, Breaking Beats: Churches and Hip-Hop — A Basic Guide to Key Issues,” was authored by the CERCL Writing Collective.

The writing group’s mentor, Anthony Pinn, Rice professor of religion, and Bernard “Bun B” Freeman, a CERCL distinguished visiting lecturer, will also be honored by the hip-hop community for their forthcoming new free online edX course, Religion and Hip-Hop Culture.

Who: CERCL Writing Collective, Anthony Pinn and Bun B.

What: Book launch for “Breaking Bread, Breaking Beats: Churches and Hip-Hop — A Basic Guide to Key Issues.”

When: 7 p.m. Feb. 19.

Where: Alley Kat, 3718 Main St., Houston.

“Breaking Bread, Breaking Beats” is a project where 10 people “write as one voice to illuminate the ways that hip-hop and the black church agree, disagree and inform each other on key topics.”

The book grew out of the popular religion and hip-hop classroom course offered at Rice by Pinn and Bun B, and it offers “engaging insights into one of today’s most important musical genres and reflects on its broad cultural impact.”

The Religion and Hip-Hop Culture course, RELI157x, is the first massive open online course for Pinn and Bun B. It is built upon and expands the popular class they have taught together at Rice University.

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Follow Rice News and Media Relations on Twitter @RiceUNews.

Follow Pinn on Twitter @anthony_pinn.

Follow Bun B on Twitter @BunBTrillOG.

Follow the forthcoming hip-hop and religion class on Twitter @RELI157X.

Like RELI157X on Facebook here.

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,920 undergraduates and 2,567 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just over 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is highly ranked for best quality of life by the Princeton Review and for best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. To read “What they’re saying about Rice,” go here.