Going beyond the traditional and more common approach of analyzing rap lyrics, from film, dance, to virtual reality, Religion and Hip Hop takes a fresh approach to exploring the paranoid posture of the religious in popular cultural forms, by going beyond what "is" religious about Hip Hop culture. Rather, Miller explores what rhetorical uses of religion in Hip Hop culture accomplish for various and often competing social and cultural interests.
Monica R. Miller is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanistic Approaches to the Social Sciences at Lewis & Clark College, Department of Religious Studies. She is co-chair of a new American Academy of Religion (AAR) group entitled 'Critical Approaches to the Study of Hip Hop and Religion' and Senior Research Fellow with the Institute for Humanist Studies (IHS), Washington, DC.